Rupert Lowe

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I cannot tell you how uncomfortable I feel sitting on the Government side of the Chamber, but I could not find a spare seat anywhere else, which is a testament to the fact that this subject is contested extremely passionately and that arguably it needs to be debated in the Chamber. Digital ID is the biggest step towards a surveillance state that this country has faced in my lifetime. If any Government want access to every detail of our lives, they are the ones who should be feared. We live in a country where the state cannot even run a basic IT system without losing data or leaking personal details. Digital ID will not last a week before a mountain of sensitive personal data is left at a bus stop in Kent again. I do not trust any Government. I certainly do not trust this Government. Let us remember: once the Government get a new power, they never give it back. It expands and evolves. Digital ID will not stop at proving who we are. It will creep into travel, banking, housing, benefits and even voting. Today, it is voluntary; tomorrow, it will be required for security reasons. The day after that, we will not be able to access basic services without it—all for our own good, remember. Britain is supposed to be a country in which the Government serve the people, not the other way around. It is a country built on privacy, liberty and trust. British people just want the Government to leave them alone and get out of their lives—to build a business, raise a family and live in peace. Digital ID treats every citizen as a suspect. It assumes that the state has the right to look over our shoulders. We defend against it by severely limiting the power of the state, not radically expanding it. Abolishing jury trials, cancelling elections, implementing facial recognition—and now this. This incoming dystopian future must be resisted. I will be holding my own protest against this creeping move towards George Orwell’s “Animal Farm”. I will simply not comply. I will not be downloading a digital ID and I urge other MPs to commit to doing the same. The solution is obvious: I will just have to reinvest in a Nokia—I preferred the simplicity of that anyway. The sound people of Great Yarmouth do not want digital ID.