Foreign Secretary hints digital ID cards will be introduced for 13-year-olds
Yvette Cooper spoke from Paris where she refused to rule out the plans
The Foreign Secretary has told LBC that the Government could push ahead with introducing digital ID cards for 13-year-olds.
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Yvette Cooper told Nick Ferrari at Breakfast that the department will "consult on details on how we could make it work."
It comes two weeks after Sir Keir Starmer announced the plans in a bid to tackle illegal immigration.
Under the scheme, photo IDs would be stored on phones in a similar way to digital bank cards and would contain information on the holder's name, residency status, date of birth and nationality.
Read more: Digital ID cards will not restrict use of public services, minister insists to LBC
A petition was then launched to block the proposals, which has since gained over 2.8million signatures.
When asked by Nick how supportive she would be of bringing the ID cards for 13-year-olds, Ms Cooper refused to rule it out.
She said: "Well, everybody has forms of digital ID, don't they now?
"I mean, we all have different ways of having to prove who we are and so on.
"So the department's going to consult on the details and how we make this work."
Nick then asked: "Do you think 13-year-olds should have some form of digital ID?"
The minister replied: "Well, lots of 13-year-olds already do. And what the department is going to be consulting on is exactly how that should be taken forward.
"So I do think that this is the right way forward to have this standardised process now. And it's something that we had been already setting out for people who come to work from abroad.
"We'd already started a process of developing effectively digital ID with E visas and so on for those coming to the UK from abroad to, so that actually people can prove who they are and whether they have a right to work in the UK."
Nick pointed later pointed out that 10,040 people have arrived in the UK since the "one in one out" policy with France and 26 have left.
Ms Cooper responded: "Well we obviously continue to remove and return people. In fact, there's been a nearly 30% increase in the returns of failed asylum seekers since the general election.
"So there's huge numbers of returns that we've actually been increasing, and rightly so. But you talked specifically about the French pilot agreement. It is a pilot. We made no secret about that.
"We described it as a pilot to get things going and to test systems. And those systems are now in place, are now being tested and are proving to work.
"Because the system is to make sure that you can properly return people, that it doesn't get blocked by the courts.
"So that is now happening and we've now shown it is possible for the first time to return to France people who arrived on small boats, because frankly, somebody is coming on by boat through a criminal gang.
"With the pilots now being rolled out now, we have the potential to be able to ramp it up. I do want to see those numbers increase.
"I also want to see that be built with other countries as well. We do have to test processes and deliver it.
"If you remember, the previous government ran a Rwanda scheme that ran for two and a half years, didn't return a single person.
"The only thing they managed to do was four volunteers in the space of two and a half years. So what we're doing is doing things very practically step by step.
"That's the right thing to do. But of course, then we'll be going further, bringing in a whole series of other changes as well."