Identity Cards
Home Department
Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the identity card will be a (a) contact and (b) contactless card.
Andy Burnham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Leigh, Labour)
It is currently planned that identity cards issued to British nationals eligible for a passport could be used by individuals for travel within Europe. In order to facilitate this, the card will need to meet standards established by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), which require the card to be contactless in order to be considered a valid travel document.
In addition, we are also investigating whether it would be beneficial and cost effective to be compatible with other card reader national infrastructures, such as the Chip & PIN network, which requires contact card.
Thus it is possible that an identity card will function as both a contact and contactless card.