People coming here illegally working cash in hand will continue to do so after this nonsense is introduced. ID won’t fix this.
Except it will, because now the employers have absolutely no excuse for letting it happen. If they can't prove that they checked a person's digital ID, then they can (and should) be prosecuted on criminal charges. As it stands, a birth certificate is enough to work, and that certificate can be very easily forged. It's absolutely ridiculous and beyond belief that someone can start working on the UK with nothing more than a birth certificate.
Nobody thinks it will be used just for eligibility of proof to work, there are myriad uses.
The thing that it really helps with is ending the circus of the UK having countless documents that can theoretically be used to prove who you are and your age.
The difference is that people uploading ID etc make a choice to do it. This is being “told” to do it. And people don’t like being told what to do.
Except they already comply with a huge amount of regulations on a daily basis. The UK is a very regulated society compared to most European countries.
The irony of a birth certificate being counted as ID is that it is very easy to get one for someone else with very few checks. With their agreement of course I have obtained a copy of someone else's birth certificate to use for a DBS check - but nothing would have stopped me doing it without their consent!
Exactly. Are there even any restrictions on obtaining a birth certificate belonging to someone else? I obtained my birth mother's birth certificate a few months ago without her knowledge/consent, and for fun, I ordered it from my wife's name and credit card. Essentially, all that Scotland's People knew is that some random Polish woman with a Polish address was ordering some Scottish woman's birth certificate, and they were perfectly happy to send it out.
In fact, if my wife had ordered someone's birth certificate who was roughly the same age as her, she could (as a fluent English speaker with no discernible accent beyond sounding like a middle class character from a generic crap BBC sitcom) easily pass as a British citizen.
Also, how do you know what this “app” will be doing in the background on your phone? Tracking movement, looking at your apps, messages etc? The list goes on.
Do you know how many people are involved in deploying something like this? It would be absolutely impossible to cover up such functionality, and it would bring down a government if it was revealed. If you're simply talking about spooks accessing your phone, well, they most likely already can.
Rolling out this scheme to combat illegal immigration is nonsense. It won’t fix it. It’s an incredibly underhand way to eventually steal control over our lives.
So, you're openly supporting *not* combating illegal immigration, identity theft and all the other things that are currently widespread in the UK but pretty much unheard of in Europe?
The same way that you are told to have a National Insurance number? Or an NHS number. Or a form of identification for a job. This simply streamlines services together into one, and makes it a lot easier to access services and provide ID.
But but this is different! Or something.
