Cards with potential for misuse

True, a year hence new procedures and rules will govern employment and housing rights, but these measures are likely to function principally as a monitoring mechanism rather than the fully fledged controls which so many believe to be necessary if the quality of Island life is to be maintained.

That said, the new measures will spell the end of the A to K housing qualification system. Its passing is unlikely to be mourned – especially by those who, under the new arrangements, will be granted tenancy and lease-hold rights that are currently denied to them.

However, there are other features of the new system which will be less favourably received. The words Population Register – the name given to the database which will hold details of all residents – and registration card will, without doubt, conjure visions of Big Brother surveillance and, among older Islanders, stir unpleasant memories of the Occupation, the era when carrying registration cards issued by an unwelcome and resented foreign power was obligatory.

The idea that the register will immediately be used for nefarious purposes might well be far-fetched, but the Constable of St Lawrence, Deirdre Mezbourian, was quite right to warn the House that the new cards will be widely regarded as nothing more or less than identity cards. This is exactly how they will be viewed by a great many people.

Indeed, the coyness with which the architects of the new system are failing to call a spade a spade in respect of the cards will be a source of considerable annoyance. Senator Paul Routier, who piloted the new legislation through this week’s debate, has said that ‘this is nowhere near an identity card’, but his words have a hollow ring to them. As the saying goes, ‘If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.’

But more than terminology is at stake here. As Senator Philip Ozouf has pointed out, in the wrong hands the content of the compulsory database could be misused.

We must, therefore, demand that States Members and their advisers fulfil the role that the Senator ascribes to them – guardians of our civil liberties. It is also essential that if there were any possibility of the scope and usage of the registration system being extended, this would be the subject of open debate in the States Assembly.