The announcement that the Government is considering introducing a digital ID system for everyone, as a means of tackling the UK’s ‘pull factors’ which fuel the channel crossings, has prompted a large number of constituents to send me their objections.
I share their concerns and I opposed the last Labour Government’s proposals for ID cards under Tony Blair.
We would be sacrificing a great deal of our privacy and our right to go about our lawful business unimpeded. Once available, many more uses would be found for such technology, which would increasingly require us to account for ourselves.
I accept that levels illegal migration are overwhelming our resources and putting enormous strain on our social fabric. A further tragedy is that the endeavour to accommodate the migrants is being funded by our foreign aid budget, which should properly be being spent in the regions from which the migrants are coming, and where it would so much further in helping many more people.
Were I persuaded that digital ID’s were solution to our problem I could at least consider if such a surrender of our privacy and liberty was worth it. I am not so persuaded. Employers, banks and landlords are already under an obligation to check the bona fides of employees and tenants. Means already exist by which that information can be had.
The existence of a more convenient tool for checking will have no impact in the black economy where there is no intention of checking, in any event.
The reality is not that we can’t identify illegal migrants, we have hotels and other accommodation burgeoning with them. Our problem isn’t finding them, it is finding somewhere to send them.
The main effort must be to find a safe place to send them, which was the whole point of the Rwanda agreement that the Government scrapped before it was implemented, despite the fact that £700 million had already been spent setting it up. I believe that it would have worked: Even before we were anywhere near getting it up and running, the Government of Ireland were complaining that illegal migration was increasing sharply to the Republic as migrants sought to avoid UK with the possibility of deportation to Rwanda.
Now other jurisdictions are looking seriously at the prospect of Rwanda, including the facilities that British tax-payers provided before our government abandoned the endeavour.
Digital IDs won’t go any way salvage the opportunity lost.