ID Cards on Trial: Minister defends "robust" biometrics

The Home Office has once again rounded on critics of the ID card scheme and dismissed concerns that biometric technology will not be accurate or reliable enough when the first cards are introduced in 2008.

The attack by Home Office Minister Tony McNulty at an event hosted by IT industry trade body Intellect in London came on the same day that silicon.com launched its ID Cards on Trial campaign, which aims to lobby the government to address cost, scope and technological concerns that could derail the whole project.

Addressing an audience of IT suppliers chomping at the bit for nuggets of information about when the first tenders might go out, McNulty said: "Once we get onto the procurement process and delivery neither the government nor the IT sector will be found wanting... I am still confident and robust in my view about the technology in view of the timetable we are talking about."

The high biometric failure rates from the Passport Service's biometric enrolment trials were dismissed by Home Office ID cards programme director Katherine Courtney, who said the technology will be put through more rigorous testing once the bill has been passed.

Yet key technical experts have expressed to silicon.com - both publicly and privately - serious doubts over both the iris and facial recognition technologies currently proposed by the government to be included on the ID card.

Neil Fisher, security solutions director, said anything less than 100 per cent accuracy will damage the integrity of ID cards, while Les Fraser, security development consultant at the British Computer Society, told silicon.com: "I'm not sure the biometric technology to deliver this is quite there yet."

McNulty's speech also raised more questions about who will have access to the national identity register. He said the bill gives no power for any authorities to trawl the register but then admitted that the police will be able to conduct fingerprint matches against the ID database so long as they have first tried to do a match in the police fingerprint database.

Confusion still remains about the scope of the ID card project despite McNulty claiming it will be just an identity register that holds basic personal information.

"The notion of a universal entitlement card to access any public service is certainly not the case," he said.

Yet he then went on to talk about the ID card and register being a hub surrounded by spokes of public and private sector services - including identity checks by employers and age checks by retailers - which could gradually be built up around it to "meet a broader vision".

McNulty confirmed the government expects the bill to pass through the House of Commons and the Lords by the end of October, with ID cards on the statute book by the end of the year.