Jacqui Smith, the UK's Home Secretary told the press that the cards served the function of allowing people to "easily and securely prove their identity".
Many have criticized the roll-out to a few immigrants as being a dry run for the introduction of national identity cards for everyone.
"We want to be able to prevent those here illegally from benefiting from the privileges of Britain," she said. "We all want to see our borders more secure, and human trafficking, organized immigration crime, illegal working and benefit fraud tackled. ID cards for foreign nationals, in locking people to one identity, will deliver in all these areas."
However people from most parts of Europe will not receive the card because they have the right to move freely in and out of the UK, as do UK citizens within EU countries. This is why the cards will be rolled out to other foreigners.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) Home Affairs spokesman Pete Wishart MP told the press that his party had opposed ID cards from the outset. He highlighted the government's "abysmal record on data protection". Meanwhile all the major political parties expressed their dislike of the scheme.
The last thing the UK government needs is more data to look after, and the biometric cards would create a large amount of data. It's past record for keeping data safe is abysmal.
On the 19th of April 2008 the head of Revenue & Customs was forced to resign after his department lost important details pertaining to 15 million child benefit claimants. While more recently the details of 84,000 criminals in the justice system went missing, and this was followed by the loss of data concerning staff within the prison system.
The timetable for the cards to roll out may proceed as follows:
- 2008 - Some non-EU nationals will be expected to get them.
- 2009 – ID cards will become compulsory for the 200,000 UK citizens and EU nationals who work in 'sensitive' jobs, such as at airports.
- 2010 - Voluntary scheme will come into play for students.
- 2012 - Biometric passports will be issued and applicants will be able to get ID cards along with their passport application, should they decide they want to.
- 2017 – By then it is expected that a full roll-out of identity cards will proceed.
However if the government does get away with rolling out biometric ID cards, will it commit to storing the data safely? Time will tell, but keep your eye out for Ministry of Defence (MoD) laptops accidentally left on the train, because they'll be chock full of everyone's biometric data.
