The Home Office wants lawyers to be ‘early adopters’ of ID equipment. According to minister Meg Hillier, ‘for legal transactions it might well be worthwhile [solicitors] having a reading machine to quickly verify ID’ (see [2009] Gazette, 5 February, 4). There are many civil liberty arguments against the scheme. But are there any practical benefits to solicitors which outweigh these considerations?

ID cards on their own are no better at confirming identification than a passport or driving licence. They are just as susceptible to forgery. For the scheme to be effective, solicitors will have to use the Identity Verification Service (for details see the Identity and Passport Service website www.ips.gov.uk.) They must have a machine that can read the client’s biometric information (that is, fingerprint and/or iris scan) and read the card. This information must then be communicated to the National Identity Register (NIR) for verification. Any organisation wishing to use the Identity Verification Service must be accredited.

The cost to solicitors will be substantial. The government has failed to provide figures for this. It includes buying and maintaining the machinery and maintaining a secure connection to the NIR. Obtaining accreditation is bound to be expensive. Staff must be vetted and trained to use the equipment. Firms will have to consider setting aside a private area for the delicate task of checking biometric information.

The Home Office figure for the ID scheme is around £5bn. The cost of passports has already rocketed to pay for it. But many experts put the true cost at £20bn or more. One reason is that the government figure does not include the cost to organisations that use the scheme. Even if a firm makes the investment, possibilities for using the scheme are limited and fraught with risk. There will be many without ID cards, such as temporary visitors. There will be the elderly and infirm who cannot obtain or use cards. There is a high risk of malfunction of the cards and of the system. What do you do if the computer says no? The NIR will be one of the largest databases ever constructed. Many less ambitious computer projects have proved disastrous. There is no reason to believe that the NIR will be any more reliable.

There are also grave concerns about the security of the system. A central weakness is the storage of so much personal data in one place. It has been described as a ‘honey pot’ for fraudsters and terrorists. The government routinely mislays vast amounts of personal data. No system is immune from hacking or theft by insiders. Why would any client, given the choice, want to open themselves to the risk of using such a system? Clients may also be concerned that they are surrendering yet more personal information to the government.

The government has invested a huge amount of political capital in the ID scheme, not to mention taxpayers’ money. It has tried to introduce the scheme incrementally in the face of mounting opposition across the political spectrum. Cards were made compulsory for foreign nationals in 2008. They were no doubt seen as a soft target to start with. The government is now desperate to give the scheme credibility by persuading organisations to participate.

Solicitors should take note of the response of the banking industry. The UK payments association Apacs, whose members include major high street banks, is worried that security features which would have made the scheme useful for checking identity in large money transfers and online transactions have been stripped from the scheme. In January, Apacs’ head of security told a conference hosted by the British Computer Society Security Forum that ‘the online capabilities that we were hoping were going to be present are unlikely to be there for the foreseeable future’.

The scheme is outrageously expensive, costing many times the legal aid budget; it is socially divisive; it strips people of their privacy. And it offers no advantages to solicitors, just more problems and expense. We should firmly reject any attempt by the government to use us to help justify their monstrous white elephant.

Paul Kaufman is a partner at Wiseman Lee LLP and a member of the No2ID lawyers group WWW.NO2ID.NET