Need a job? Get a card - arresting ID pitch to business

In Need a job? Get a card - arresting ID pitch to business, John Lettice describes how the government is planning to provide businesses with strong incentives to use the ID card system as the basis for compulsory ID checking prior to employing anybody.

"The Bill's Regulatory Impact Statement tells us that the bill has no provisions "which allow the Government to require business, charities or voluntary bodies to make identity checks using the identity cards scheme." And indeed it doesn't."

The 1996 Asylum and Immigration Act requires employers to check that potential employees have a right to work in this country before giving them a job.

"Under the Act it is a criminal offence for an employer to fail to make an adequate check, but this particular provision is a difficult one to bring in and to enforce, because employers and their organisations could reasonably protest about cost and about not being an immigration service, and because if the Home Office did prosecute then they'd most likely fail to get a conviction because the employer could claim to have seen a document that looked genuine, and how the blazes were they to know? Well, hello employers, now you are an immigration service."

But, as David Blunkett said before he lost his job as Home Secretary, "The verification process under ID cards would remove that excuse completely and people would know who was entitled to be here and open to pay taxes and NI."

"Employers don't have to check via the ID scheme, and under the Act it will actually be illegal to insist on such a check prior to cards becoming compulsory, but the scheme would "help to enforce the law against unscrupulous employers who would no longer have a defence in claiming they examined an unfamiliar document which appeared genuine to them. And: "...the Government expects that legitimate employers would want to encourage their employees to provide verifiable proof of identity when taking up a job... The scheme allows for records of on-line verification checks to be held, so establishing whether an employer has complied with the law will be more straightforward."

Now, that one's very cute indeed. The Home Office is determined that the ID scheme operates via checks to the National Identity Register, rather than simply as a photo ID upgrade that can be checked locally, the main reason for this being that widespread online checking will generate a nationwide network of ID checks that track back to the Home Office. Here it is pointing out that using an online check will protect the employer because the NIR will have an audit trail proving that the check was made, whereas if the employer just looked at the card, we'd only have their word for that, wouldn't we? So we'll just rub it in: " Only an on-line check would give an employer the assurance that a record of the check would be held on the National Identity Register and would therefore provide a defence against prosecution."

Clearly it's going to be a lot safer to embrace the ID scheme sooner rather than later"

I can't imagine that employers and their representatives such as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), the Institute of Directors or such like minded bodies will be too keen on any of this given the huge associated costs. They certainly objected to the 1996 Act at the time as tantamount to turning employers into a branch of the immigration service. It hasn't really worked out that way in practice because clause 8, as John Lettice says is unenforceable but certainly many legitimate employers have spent significant sums on ID checks and processes that they would otherwise not have done.

What is it about public policy making, even when there are clear problems and clearly identified perpetrators/causes of those problems, that can make it look so ludicrous in the light of even a superficial analysis?

1. Identify a problem [eg exploitation of illegal immigrants]
2. Identify perpetrators [rogue employers]
3. Think up arbitrary rule to "solve" the problem [turn employers into immigration checkers] in order to be seen to be "doing something"
4. Declare rule must be implemented by everyone [to create the impression of "fairness" and avoidance of accusation of discrimination]
5. Have the rule blindly and blanketly impemented by the majority of honest actors [most legimate employers], with the same level of thought as the creation of the original policy (ie stupidly and with absolute risk avoidance in mind, so that the idiotic effects cascade and get compounded at institutional level)
6. Have the rule blanketly ignored by the perpetrators of the problem [rogue employers]
7. Hassle and "audit" those honest employers who have implemented the arbitrary rule to see "how well" they have done so and pick as many holes as you can in their processes to demonstrate the audit process is "thorough."
8. Totally fail to tackle the perpetrators of the problem because you're too busy mmonitoring the "effectiveness" of your "solution" as implemented by those who have voluntarily [under duress] deployed it.
9. Declare total success to the media as some arbitrary large percentage [eg 92%] of employers are now running with your "solution" [despite the 1% of rogue employers continuing to operate unscrupulously as before].