It’s right to reconsider ID cards after years of failure on illegal migration

sir – I wholeheartedly endorse Lord Blunkett’s argument that ID cards could fix the small-boats crisis (report, April 2).

My wife and I quite frequently travel to mainland Europe and envy our continental neighbours who can travel abroad using only their ID cards.

When the Labour government introduced an ID trial in 2009, we obtained ID cards for ourselves. We travelled abroad using only these cards (no passports), provoking great interest at passport control. They looked like driving licences, but carried much more information digitally than a normal passport.

Unfortunately, the Coalition government scrapped the trial, yet the cards remain for us a very good idea gone to waste.

Since migrant boats started to cross the Channel some years ago, I have felt that migrants choose a risky route to reach this country because they could disappear, as no ID is required to be carried. If they claimed asylum in countries such as France or Germany, they would need to obtain ID, and hence be traceable.

Today the problem has grown to such an extent that it is now out of control. Yet were ID cards introduced, it would massively decrease the migrant numbers coming to our shores, and a controlled migration policy could be implemented so that genuine migrants and asylum seekers might be allowed to enter without needing to risk their lives in the process.

Roy Moore

Wigan, Lancashire

sir – British citizens already carry multiple means of identifying ourselves. The issue is not having a card, but who has the right to access all or parts of the information on it, and who controls that access. The data must reside on the card and not a central database.

We need a rational, scientific discussion about what is possible. Only then can an informed decision be made as to whether the benefits will outweigh the not insignificant costs. John A Landamore

Lutterworth, Leicestershire

sir – Enforcing possession of ID cards requires disproportionately draconian punishments, often penalising those who innocently forget or lose them.

Overstretched police forces will be distracted by checking and prosecuting ID card infractions rather than pursuing genuine criminals. The ID card database will gather evergreater quantities of information about ordinary people, which will be vulnerable to criminal or malicious attacks. The people smugglers will simply adapt to these new rules.

The winners will be the contractors running the database, the organised crime gangs that will exploit the system and lawyers who will profit from the new legislation in a tsunami of human rights cases.

Mike Tickner Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire