ID and the UK

9 March 2008

Subjects:

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I got the very strong impression from Gordon Brown's 20th Feb speech on immigration that "identity management" will be one of the mechanisms deployed to forge Britishness as he sees it, a point picked up by Britology Watch (see my belated post). If so reactions in Scotland and Wales will be very important - and Northern Ireland even if it is left on the other side of the e-borders... Michael Seattle at the The Glasgow Herald reported a very strong reaction from the Scottish government to Jaqui Smith's recent announcements,

Last night, a Scottish Government spokesman claimed the supposed voluntary scheme for most Britons was "a compulsory one in all but name". He told The Herald: "We are opposed to the concept of compulsory ID cards. We feel the UK Government is attempting to introduce this measure by stealth. We will be making representations to them to make clear our vehement opposition to it."

The spokesman stressed how it was not just the Scottish Government but also the Scottish Parliament which had "no desire" to see an ID card scheme...

Earlier, when the Prime Minister's spokesman was asked if he thought the UK Government would encounter difficulties with the Scottish Government over the proposed ID card scheme, he replied he had "no reason to believe" this would be the case and that there were "well-established mechanisms" for discussing the issue with Edinburgh.

Hat tip - Henry Porter

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Comments

David (not verified)

9 March 2008 - 9:38pm

I like the above phrase about identity management being "one of the mechanisms deployed to forge Britishness": the ID cards, of course, being ostensibly deployed to prevent people from forging other people's identities, in the other sense of the term!

Could one of the means used to make the 'voluntary' scheme effectively compulsory be a denial of full or equal access to all the 'services' of government, increasingly delivered electronically? You can see it now: you'd need your ID card to obtain a 'user name' and perhaps even a PIN to access government-held information on you and associated e-services - assuming they hadn't already lost the said information, that is. A hacker's paradise!

David, aka Britology Watch

Mike Stallard (not verified)

11 March 2008 - 9:09am

Surprising really that the Red Scottish Parliament is utterly right on a Referendum and now utterly right on ID cards - who'd have thought it!