Jacqui Smith: The Interview
Martin Bright and John Kampfner have interviewed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for The New Statesman:
On ID cards, she is even more dogmatic. Although the Brown government has initiated reviews of policy on casinos, cannabis and 24-hour drinking, there is no turning back on this. Some had wondered – it now turns out to be wishful thinking – if Brown, during his hesitant first Prime Minister’s Questions, had been bounced into restating the government’s commitment to ID cards. The hope was that he didn’t mean it, that ministers might eventually shelve the scheme in the face of protests or rising costs.
Not a bit of it, says Smith. “You do need a system which has at its heart the ability, at a national level, to tie people’s identity to a record of who they are.” It has been suggested that it would be possible to have an identity database, but no physical card. On this point, Smith, again, is crystal clear. “There will be an ID card,” she says. “From 2009 we will be introducing ID cards for UK citizens. From 2008 we will introduce what will effectively be an ID card for those who have been in the UK for more than six months.”
