ID card equipment to be destroyed

THE national ID card database - stored in Chadderton — is be destroyed to stop it falling into the wrong hands, Government papers reveal.

Home Secretary Theresa May has ordered that equipment that held the sensitive data at 3M Security Printing and Systems in Broadway, which had the job of manufacturing ID cards, be physically destroyed rather than simply wiped clean.

The Home Office will even have to buy some equipment from 3M in order to destroy it.

The coalition set out plans to scrap Labour’s controversial ID card scheme as soon as it entered government — but it will take much more than hitting the delete key.

Expensive and barely-used equipment will be removed from offices and wrecked, in accordance with government guidelines on recycling, to consign it to history.

A document from the Identity and Passport Service — entitled National Identity Register Destruction and Equipment Decommissioning — details how the action will be taken once the Identity Documents Bill has received Royal Assent, expected before the end of the year.

Any machine that has come into contact with personal details contained on the database wiil either be cleansed of its contents or fed into a shredder.

The Government is keen to avoid the public relations disaster of the data falling into the wrong hands and a potential security threat for those on the register — particularly following the HM Revenue and Customs lost discs fiasco.