Furious girl kicked of of Parliament debate after heckling MPs over digital ID
A woman who was watching a Westminster Hall debate on digital ID was kicked out after shouting ‘the people will not comply’ and urging MPs to ‘listen to the people’
Protester kicked out of digital ID debate in Parliament
A furious member of the public was thrown out of a Parliamentary debate after screaming “the people will not comply” with digital ID.
The woman – sitting in the public gallery – interrupted a debate on the controversial proposal, urging MPs to “listen to the people”. As she got to her feet and shouted, Tory Sir Edward Leigh, who was chairing the debate, told Parliamentary staff to remove her, telling them: “Don’t just stand there”.
The dramatic scene unfolded as MPs debated a petition signed by nearly three million voters demanding digital ID is scrapped. She got to her feet and shouted: “We don’t want this and we will not comply. The people say no.”
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It came as digital ID cards – which the Government says will target illegal working – came under fire from members of all parties. Tory Robbie Moore said digital ID could be a “true honeypot for hackers all over the world“. And he added: “Once digital ID comes into force, no political party can promise its intentions will stay good forever.
“Put simply, an ID card gives the state permanent control, and I say no.” And Your Party’s Jeremy Corbyn told MPs: “There’s a whole vein of thought across the country where people are feeling a quite reasonable sense of paranoia about the levels of surveillance under which they are under at the present time.”
Lib Dem Steve Darling said he hoped the Government would see the opposition as a “red card”, stating: “It will do nothing about the Russian threat. It will do nothing about the small boats across the water, and it will do nothing about fraud in the workplace.”
It was branded “dangerous” by Labour backbencher Imran Hussain, while Rachael Maskell said she was begging ministers from her party to stop.
However Labour’s Peter Prinsley – a supporter – said: “We should not forego the incredible benefits of digital ID because of the hypothetical chance at something we are against and can’t prevent might happen. And colleagues, those benefits would be incredible.
“Before entering this place, I was a surgeon for many years. The biggest problem I faced on a daily basis was accessing basic information about the patients. This is stored in piecemeal fashion across myriads of organizations. Now we could use digital ID to create a unified record and give this to the patients to control.”
And Labour MP Tony Vaughan said: “If the police need to probe the right to work. They have no ability to do that on the spot, and we need to be making it easier for the state to check rights to work. [18:37:00][8.2]
Earlier campaign group Big Brother Watch held a protest outside Parliament. Director Silkie Carlo said: “Plans for a mandatory digital ID would make us all reliant on a digital pass to go about our daily lives, turning us into a checkpoint society that is wholly un-British.
“Millions of people object to the plans, which have no democratic mandate and would result in an unprecedented assault on our civil liberties.”
