Opposition to ID cards reaches 50%

Anthony Wells

A new ICM poll for the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust suggests 50% of people now think ID cards would be a bad idea, with 47% thinking them a good idea.

The wording in the question was the same as used in the series of polls done for No2ID by ICM, so it is directly comparable to previous questions - back in September before the loss of benefit data the same question was showing 54% in favour and only 42% against, though it should be pointed out that the opposition isn’t unprecedented, a poll in July 2007 found a majority against cards.

Despite the drop in support for ID cards and the recent data loss incidents, the public still seem positive about other proposals whee data security would be an issue - 51% said they would be comfortable with the government building a database of everyone in the country including their fingerprints (48% were uncomfortable), 67% were happy with the government collecting travel information on British citizens going in and out of the country (31% were uncomfortable), 53% were comfortable with the idea of the government making a database with information on every child in the UK (45% uncomfortable). Only with the idea of allowing government departments to share information provided to one of them to others were a majority (52%) uncomfortable.

RSS TrackBack URL

Translate: