Teachers may get first ID cards
Teachers, childcare workers and criminals may be compelled to have identity cards years before they become mandatory for everyone else, according to Yuba Bessaoud and Andrew Porter writing in the Sunday Times:
At a private briefing in Downing Street for a group of Labour party researchers, Andy Burnham, a Home Office minister, said the government was considering forcing anyone who had to go through a criminal record check to hold an ID card.
This would include teachers and childcare workers, who must be vetted before they can work with children, and criminals and people requesting firearms licences.
It’s worth noting that under the government proposals, once someone has been issued with an ID card, all the compulsion of the act would apply to that individual for evermore, including the requirement to notify the Home Office (and pay a fee?) on every change of personal circumstances (e.g. marriage, change of address), produce an ID card when using free public services, and so on.
August 18th, 2005 at 12:22
People requesting firearms licenses are the same as criminals apparently…..
August 18th, 2005 at 20:36
It was also hinted that criminal records checks might be a point of registration during standing committee. The rationale is presumably that since they are already making all these people jump through a lot of hoops so they win’t mind a few more, and that since the checks are much more frequent for an individual than passport applications and cover a different segment of the population (the average carer travels a bit less than average), they will get a lot of details very quickly.
August 18th, 2005 at 20:40
Compulsion to produce the card for public services wouldn’t apply to these groups immediately. Because for them registration will be, by the Home Office definition voluntary: they could give up their careers rather than be registered.
Certain careers reserved for state registered and approved people only. Has a 1930s ring about it to me.
September 24th, 2005 at 09:48
Biggest British firms could make ID cards compulsory for staff
The Scotsman reports that large companies could immediately force employees and job applicants to register for an identity card if parliament legislates for “voluntary” ID cards.
October 3rd, 2005 at 23:47
I presently need a criminal record check to work. I state here that I will not buy an ID card – full stop!
I was criminalised for speaking to my child outside the times laid down in a contact order – polite, pleasent, no violence (have a court document that states violence was not part of anything I did). Dodgy court process… My livelihood has been decaying since and is about to die.
Let me see. Throughout the UK (I believe already in place if not then very soon) a man could face up to 5 yrs in prison (and definitely a prison sentance) should an ex-pertner make allegation against him – no evidence required… In my particular case the Judge stated in court that women making allegations cannot lie – yes I repeated it correctly; they cannot lie (not that they won’t lie). I admit there are many women who do have a hard time with ex-partners – believe me, you don’t want these other women making matters worse.
Lets make a speeding ticket a criminal offence, as is anything late with the taxman; failure to keep you drivers licence and passport details strictly up to date; then there is taxing your car… don’t forget to pay your TV licence (and the dog licence too) the list grows day by day… all criminal acts, or soon will be.. If the ordinary person in the street can be criminalised so easily then that is all that is needed to compulsorily put a hell of a lot of people on the ID card scheme – and prove the success and popularity of the ‘voluntary uptake’.
Where there is a will there is a way as they say!
December 7th, 2005 at 17:36
Good news from the Scottish Executive which was asked (S2W-19906): “whether it will require individuals to hold an identity card in order to have a criminal record check and, if so, when this requirement will be introduced”.
In reply Tom McCabe has stated that:
“If Scottish Ministers wanted to make it compulsory for those using the services of Disclosure Scotland to hold an identity card or submit to an identity check through the National Identity Register, then this, according to Section 44 of the Identity Cards bill, would require an Act of the Scottish Parliament.
The Executive currently has no plans to require individuals to hold an identity card in order to have a criminal record check carried out or for any other purpose.”
So, it looks like we may be able to attract a lot of new teachers to Scotland!