Clause 4 - Electoral identity card
Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Bill
6:45 pm
Mr Des Browne (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Northern Ireland Office; Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
I should say at the outset that I have no objection in principle to an electoral identity card on which information is stored by an electronic chip. However, there are practical drawbacks to such an approach. In particular, at this stage in the process it may be difficult to obtain public support for such a significant change.
The electoral identity card will be one of several photographic identity documents that will be acceptable at the polling station. Although more than one form of identification can be used, it does not make sense for information to be stored on only one of them. Information will not be stored electronically on a passport or on a photographic driving licence. If the Translink card comes up to the security standards that we hope it will, the information stored on it electronically will be for a different purpose, in which, in any event, we are not interested. Such technology would be useful if the card were to be used to facilitate electronic voting, but that is not its purpose. Electronic voting may be an aspiration, but it is not the card's current purpose and it does not fit into this statutory scheme.