The Government’s decision to introduce a new mandatory ID by the end of this Parliament has not gone down well with many of my constituents this week. I should say at the outset that I am opposed to the idea – I think it runs the risk of being used to control peoples’ lives rather than make them easier, and I think there’s very little chance that it will solve any of the problems the government says it is seeking to address.
It is clear the announcement is largely a cynical gimmick to distract from the Labour Government’s current and ongoing scandals (Angela Rayner, Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney etc.). The Government claims that this will help tackle illegal immigration but the truth is that people coming into this country illegally and working for criminal firms who pay cash in hand are hardly likely to be hindered by a digital ID. This announcement is a smokescreen attempting to cover up that the government has failed to get a grip on the situation in the Channel where illegal crossings have, on their watch, reached record highs.
The opposition to mandatory ID cards has been predictably swift and sizeable – within a few days over 2 million people have signed an online petition against their implementation.
Rather than setting about a policy that will almost certainly take years and billions of pounds to implement, the Government needs to sort out the economy and our borders – something that it is clearly failing to do.
