Econ_May_05

The Economist

May 5th 2018

For daily analysis and debate on Britain, visit

Economist.com/britain

N THE end, Big Brother was brought

down by a Yorkshireman and a house-

wives’ league. When Clarence Willcock, a

former Liberal Party parliamentary candi-

date, was pulled over for speeding in De-

cember 1950, he refused to produce his

identity card, which had been introduced

during each world war and kept after the

second. “I am a Liberal,” he told the cops,

“and I am against this sort of thing.” The

High Court ruled against him, but com-

mended his stand. Housewives burned

their cards outside Parliament, and by 1952

theywere scrapped.

But the “Englishman’s badge of servi-

tude”, in the words of one late libertarian,

is back. Tory and Labour politicians have

been trying to reintroduce the cards for

two decades. About 12,000 Britons were

handed them under a phased roll-out in

2009, but the coalition government

scrapped them a year later. The hounding

of the Windrush generation of migrants

who came to Britain legally but could not

prove it felled the home secretary this

week (see Bagehot). It has also rejuvenated

the

-card debate.

A clutch of ex-home secretaries claim

such cardsmight have prevented the affair.

One of them, Charles Clarke, says govern-

ments have three options to tackle illegal

immigration. They can do little and hope

for the best. Like the most recent govern-

ments, they can create a “hostile environ-

cards voluntary for a decade. By then, most

people would have applied for one any-

way, reckons Alan Johnson, the home sec-

retary at the time.

What sort ofdata should be linked to it?

Health, tax and biometric data can all be

joined. Estonians use their cards to access

more than 3,000 e-services. Belgian coun-

cils keep more than 90 types of informa-

tion about each cardholder, including

whether theywant to be buried or cremat-

ed. Ken Clarke, a former Tory home secre-

tary, argues that a schememight satisfy civ-

il-libertarians if it did not become an

“all-singing, all-dancing collection of

data”. Safeguards would also help. In Esto-

nia, powerful digital encryption guards

against data breaches. In Belgium, civil ser-

vants who access data on the registry have

their own

numbers recorded.

Some argue that dishing out cards

might in fact create more Windrush-style

cases. Would the Home Office have given

cards to the people caught up in the scan-

dal? Mr Johnson says the scheme would

need a lengthy roll-out period and for

mandarins to take a generous, rather than

hostile, attitude towards applicants with-

out paperwork. Charles Clarke says a one-

offamnesty could follow the launch.

Any attempt to introduce

cards

would be opposed bypeculiar bedfellows.

Liberty, a pressure group, is as implacably

opposed as Jacob Rees-Mogg, an old-fash-

ioned Tory who insists Britain is not “the

sort of country that demands to see your

papers”. Labour, like the Liberal Demo-

crats, is now against the idea. Satbir Singh

of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Im-

migrants, a charity, is ambivalent. His view

partly rests on whether such a scheme

would be administered by the Home Of-

fice. And he does not think a card alone

would deal with the “culture of suspicion”

ment” in which landlords carry out immi-

gration checks but citizens who lack

paperwork struggle to prove their rights.

Or they can plump for identity cards,

which require a register of all citizens and

would enable Britons to prove their identi-

ty and status. “Of the three, I think it wins

by amile,” he concludes.

Howmight a scheme work? There is no

shortage of models for ministers to pinch.

Every country in the EuropeanUnionhas a

card, save for Britain, Denmark and Ire-

land. Sodomanyothers, thoughnotAmer-

ica. Greece and Italy are swapping paper

cards for plastic ones. Cards in a handful of

other

countries have no electronic

chips. One former home secretary argues

that technology has made physical cards

obsolete. Instead, Britons could be given a

unique number with which officials could

access their data, as inDenmark. Some sug-

gest adapting National Health Service

numbers, which are already assigned to

most people in the country.

European countries that deem plastic

fantastic differ over who should carry it

andwhen they should be required to flash

it. Most insist every citizen has a card but

nine, including France, do not. Belgians

must carry theirs at all times, says Michel

Poulain, a demographer. “When you go

out you take your key, your money and

your

card. You don’t forget.” Labour’s

scheme in 2009 would have made the

Identity cards

Big bother

Amess overmigrantsmightmean less fuss about IDcards

Britain

Also in this section

55 Sainsbury’s and Asda merge

55 Sex and citizenship

56 Bagehot: Sajid Javid’s in-tray

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