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STUDENTS BLACKMAILED OVER IDENTITY CARDS

TORIES WARN OF UNDERHANDED LABOUR PLANS

Students face ‘blackmail’ over Labour plans to push identity cards upon those applying for student loans, the Tories have warned. The information, which emerged in leaked Home Office documents on the 23rd January, details that anyone aged 16 or over will be ‘expected’ to hold a card in order to open a bank account or apply for a student loan from 2010. To obtain one of these biometric cards could cost anything up to £100.

The Guardian reported the documents to have said, “We should issue ID cards to young people to assist them as they open their first bank account, take out a student loan, etc.”
However, the collection of biometric details such as fingerprints of those entering higher education has been labelled by Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green as “straightforward blackmail” to reinforce “a failing policy.”

The plans revealed that the ID cards will initially be introduced to foreign nationals during this year and will be available to UK citizens voluntarily from 2009 onwards. Also, from next year they will be issued to people in “positions of trust” for instance, airport staff.

In an interview with The Observer, the Prime Minister was quick to deny ID Cards as an “encroachment on civil liberties”. He instead emphasised their potential effectiveness in combating illegal immigration, identity theft and alleviating other problems concerned with “identity management”. Gordon Brown went on to state “we are not trying to store information about individuals that is not information already in passports”.

What this means for a student entering into higher education in 2010 though, is still open to debate. With the majority of prospective students applying for loans and more still opening student bank accounts, the ID cards policy is unable to masquerade as “voluntary”. Instead, it leaves little or no choice for future students.

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