U.K. biometric passportsGovernment plans new biometric passport rollout
The U.K. government is planning to begin issuing new biometric passports in the autumn; the Home Secretary said the government was looking at providing better physical security and stronger electronic security for a new design of passport to be made available from 5 October
U.K. Home secretary Theresa May has said the government is planning to begin issuing new biometric passports in the autumn. She said it is looking at providing better physical security and stronger electronic security for a new design of passport to be made available from 5 October.
This follows the new government’s decision to drop plans for fingerprint passports.
Speaking in a House of Commons debate on legislation to abolish aspects of the previous government’s National Identity Scheme, May said: “We are halting work on fingerprint passports — the so-called second-generation biometric passports — because we believe, in common with the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, that we can maintain the integrity of our passports by other security measures.”
Kable reports that European countries within the Schengen area are introducing fingerprint passports, but they will not be required for entry into those countries by U.K. citizens.
May added that the legislation would require her to delete the data on the National Identity Register within two months of royal assent. “Photographs and fingerprint biometrics will be securely destroyed,” she told the Commons. “This will not be a literal bonfire of the last government’s vanities, but it will none the less be deeply satisfying.”
She said that “biometric residency permits for foreign nationals”, which will be retained, had been mislabeled as identity cards. “They were rolled into the ID scheme only because the Labor government were trying desperately to bolster it; they claimed that the residency permits were somehow part of the ID card scheme, which they are not.”
Closing the debate, Home Office minister Damian Green said that at present, people can still apply for ID cards, but applicants should be warned that the scheme is likely to be abolished. “A functioning national identity register would be the biggest intrusion into the privacy of the British people that the British government has ever devised,” he said.
“Just because technology has transformed how the government can use our personal information, it does not mean that a sensible government will go down that route. In all eras of technology, the principle that the state should serve the citizen, and not vice versa, is a good one, to which governments should stick.”
