United Kingdom Identity Cards and Social Exclusion

This report investigates the probable effect of the proposed UK national Identity Card system on people who are marginalised, who suffer social disadvantage or exclusion, and those who are disabled. The work focuses on the biometrics element of the government’s proposals (specifically facial recognition, ngerprinting and iris scanning).

The Report provides a specific assessment of the recently published biometrics trial conducted by the UK Passport Service (UKPS), and compares these findings with other research.

On the basis of the UK Government’s research, more than four million disabled people will probably encounter significant problems when using the proposed combination of biometric techniques. Extrapolating from this research, more than a million disabled people will suffer grave and perhaps insurmountable problems accessing public services, while more than 60,000 disabled people will not be able to register their biometrics in any way with the proposed identity scheme.