The Register’s analysis over the conviction yesterday of Kamel Bourgass is interesting.

Pick of the quotes:

As Charles Clarke, being Home Secretary, ought to be aware, asylum seekers will not, according to his own Government’s plans, be allowed to have UK national ID cards. Asylum seekers do however already have their own biometric ID card. These were introduced in 2002, and Bourgass was an asylum seeker – a failed, absconded one.

and

His fingerprints should therefore have been on record. He absconded after the failure of his application, but a conviction for shoplifting in 2002 failed to identify him as a rejected asylum applicant.

So.. we have Charles Clarke saying that he needs to be able to track the general populace because of yet another failure in the immigration system. It’s self-evident that ID cards would not have made a blind bit of difference to this case. What would have helped is an immigration system that can actually deal with applications that fail. Fixing the fact that we only deport 5% of all failed asylum applications would be a far better use of money.