HM Revenue and Customs

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Foreign and Commonwealth Office – in the House of Commons at 3:31 pm on 20 November 2007.

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Photo of Alistair Darling Alistair Darling The Chancellor of the Exchequer 3:31, 20 November 2007

As I said, one of the problems is that the information we have at the moment can, in certain circumstances, be used for fraudulent purposes by people who have no right to use it. The point about ID cards is that because they will introduce biometric information they will mean that one can be more certain that the person asking for or dealing with that information has a legal right to do so.

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J H Hall
Posted on 21 Nov 2007 11:16 pm (Report this annotation)

Biometric data improves security only in the situations where the subject is present. Is Alistair Darling now saying that the National Identity Register will never be accessed by any official unless the data subject is present? If so, this completely overturns everything the Government has previously said in the Commons about how ID cards will work.
This is a very important point for the security of a citizen's data.
It would appear that the Chancellor does not know his own Government's policy on this matter.