OK, OK, we know that it's a fascist plot and doomed to fail anyway. But there are also some grown-up points we need to raise about how the identity card scheme will work. One question causing a few blue faces in the run-up to the draft bill is, who is going to run the scheme?
According to the Passport Agency's new five-year corporate plan the answer is straightforward. Although the plan says modestly "It is clear that our activities will be fundamental to the delivery of ID cards," the agency obviously sees itself in the driving seat. "We expect that the shape of our future business will be radically different to that of today."
As expected, the corporate plan firms up a schedule for issuing passport cards alongside book passports, both containing electronic biometric chips. Plans for cards have been in the works for several years, until now carefully distanced from ID card proposals. This distinction seems to have gone out of the window.
More significantly, the plan reveals that the agency is considering creating a "person-centric" database and for links with other agencies' systems. The long planned link-up with the Office for National Statistics' register of births and deaths will end once and for all the Jackal problem of applications being made in the names of the dead. Another link is with the Immigration and Nationality Directorate's citizenship database. (The fact that this is a novelty speaks volumes about the way government works.)
Another significant proposal is to cut the validity of passports from 10 to five years. "Reducing the validity period would help us to preserve the integrity of document design, deal with issues of chip lifetime and enable upgraded biometric chips to be inserted on a more regular basis," the plan says. It would also make the passport more like an everyday identity card, which would need to carry an address, and other changing details.
Five-year passports would "create a significant extra financial burden on our customers", the plan admits, and be "operationally challenging". To deal with this, the plan envisages setting up a "large and well-equipped front-office network".
For all these ambitions, the Passport Agency is not the only candidate to lead the ID programme. Nor is it necessarily the most appropriate one to run the core component, a database of holders.
Other possible candidates are the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Culturally, the safest bets would be the DVLA - following the US fashion, driving licences are already quasi ID cards - or the ONS, which as an arms-length body from government might be more acceptable. The DWP, on the other hand, has the beginnings of a database of entitlement to state benefits, and a working, though little-loved, "front-office" network.
Much of course depends on what the card is supposed to do. As fundamental opponents frequently point out, this is still unclear. Perhaps the new bill will enlighten us on that.
