Speeches by Prinsley.

“When I was a child, it was a simple matter that we were simply told not to talk to strangers. That was how our parents kept us safe. Do you think that we ought to be thinking about how we mandate within primary schools some sort of online safety education, so that all the children are told—everybody is instructed—about…”

“That is missing.”

“For a programme like Prevent to have public support, it would need to demonstrate its effectiveness rather than we sit here supposing that. Being able to somehow come up with a figure to say, “We have prevented 90% of all possible—””

“I have the sense that people think that there is a whole process in place here that has been very successful in preventing all this stuff. Are you able to say how many episodes of terrorism have in fact been prevented? Is there any way of knowing that?”

“Hello. I am Peter Prinsley. I am the MP for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. I am interested to know how you think about this at a constituency-based level. What am I to say to a constituent on the doorstep if I am asked “What are you doing about all the terrorism we have got in our schools?” Do you have any information…”

“At a lively church hall meeting in Barningham, which is a quintessential Suffolk village, a number of my constituents raised concerns about the state of rural bus provision. They highlighted not only the infrequency of the services, but the fact that the buses are larger than demand requires; many seats are unused. Doe…”

“The sight of this sinister ship snooping around our shores strikes alarm. How can we be confident of the security of our vital undersea communication cables and what, without compromising our security, is plan B if they are severed?”

“T7. At a recent church hall meeting in Elmswell—yet another quintessential Suffolk village—a number of my constituents raised concerns about the local railway crossing. This rapidly growing village relies on an outdated level crossing, creating enormous hold-ups that are inconvenient at best and dangerous at worst. In …”

“16. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of bus services in rural areas.”

“I have a background in the health service as a surgeon. I am interested in how the digital ID might link to the health record—you were talking about that just now. It seems that if we could allow people ownership of their own health record, and that was held digitally, that would give people agency over their own healt…”

“Could you see it being an app, for instance?”

“You have reflected what I was going to ask. It seems to me that you are not opposed to a voluntary digital ID system for this country that people can opt into, provided it has certain safeguards about how the data was distributed and used. If we were to create a voluntary opt-in digital ID service for the British peopl…”

“On the first panel, we heard about many of the advantages of digital ID; on this one, we have been well apprised of the problems—you have been very successful with that venture. If people could be made to see the advantages for themselves, as individuals, my guess is that, with the appropriate safeguards, adoption woul…”

“My first question is very wide, and you could probably spend all afternoon answering it. We would like to know what you see as the main potential benefits of a more widespread adoption of a digital form of identification in this country.”

“You have partially touched on my next question, which is about the impact that the widespread adoption of digital ID could have on crime reduction and particularly on fraud.”

“I want to move on to another thing that is very topical. A lot of people have said that a mandatory digital ID would help with our immigration system. Do you believe that to be the case?”

“That answers my next question. There would be some point to this from the point of view of checking whether employers are complying with this stuff.”

“A surveillance society problem.”

“I have two more bits to my questioning. One is about international models. There are plenty of countries where this is happening. What would be a good example that this country could learn from?”

“Finally, if the Government are to do this for the British people, how do they sell this as politically acceptable? We have received thousands of submissions, most of which, as you correctly predicted, were in opposition to anything remotely like this. I think many of us can see the huge advantages of this system in all…”