Identity Cards Act 2006

The Identity Cards Act 2006 (c 15) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that has since been repealed. It created national identity cards, a personal identification document and European Union travel document, linked to a database known as the National Identity Register (NIR), which has since been destroyed.

The introduction of the scheme was much debated, and various degrees of concern about the scheme were expressed by human rights lawyers, activists, security professionals and IT experts, as well as politicians. Many of the concerns focused on the databases underlying the identity cards rather than the cards themselves. The Act specified fifty categories of information that the National Identity Register could hold on each citizen, including up to 10 fingerprints, digitised facial scan and iris scan, current and past UK and overseas places of residence of all residents of the UK throughout their lives and indexes to other Government databases (including National Insurance Number) – which would allow them to be connected. The legislation on this resident register also said that any further information could be added.