NO2ID

I've been asked to confirm whether there are any current Government plans to make the driving license into an approved document for the NIR.

Is it safe to get a driving license now, and how long might it continue to be so?

They said so in the early stages of the Bill, but that suggestion disappeared a while back. Perhaps someone told them that it might result in even less cooperation with (and even worse data at) the DVLA than currently.

The likely progression of common designated documents at the moment seems to be: passport, CRB certificate, driving licence. But there might well be pretexts beforehand to integrate other systems that affect rather smaller numbers of people: police officers' warrants, firearms certificates, SIA licences, parole licences, etc.

On a completely other tack, those in Wales might be particularly interested to note this DVLA consultation:

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/media/pdf/consul ... 011007.pdf

on a trial of smartcard provisional driving licenses. I say 'consultation' but there's actually nothing you can do about it - they are going ahead with the trial in Q1 2008, regardless.

You can download a response form from here:

http://www.dvla.gov.uk/consultations.aspx

Even if you don't send in a response to DVLA, I suggest you at least draw the attention of your MP and/or Welsh Assembly member ( http://www.writetothem.com ) to the fact that young Welsh drivers are being used as guinea-pigs for a trial that DVLA wouldn't be able to run on holders of the full license...

Sorry to fart in church (again), but I don't see the problem with DVLA's proposals. The proposed chip will contain only what's printed on the card, there is no extension to the database, any extra information on the chip is optional and may even be user-editable, and they explicitly do not want the licence to gain value as an item in its own right.

There is even an opportunity to reduce the (excessive) information on the card:

It would be nice to remove date and place of birth too, but I didn't see that on offer unfortunately.

At least one thing printed on the card is already held on IPS servers (i.e. the photo) but the objection is not so much to the smartcard itself at this stage as the utterly meaningless 'consultation' about something that they are clearly going ahead with anyway...

Yes, that is a fair point. All public consultations are like that.

That's quite disturbing. I wasn't aware of that. Since when has it been the case? Does that mean that the IPS also has my current address (as my current passport was issued when living at a previous address)?