Written question asked by Paul Goggins (Labour) on Wednesday, 12 January 2011, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 17 January 2011. It was answered by Damian Green (Conservative) on Wednesday, 19 January 2011 on behalf of the Home Office.

National Identity Register

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what security standards are to be applied in the destruction of the National Identity Register;

Answer: [holding answer 17 January 2011]: The standards and process being applied for the destruction of the information held on the National Identity Register (NIR) are set out in paper 'CWIC—NIR Destruction and Equipment Decommissioning' which was placed in the House of Lords Library on 1 November:"http://deposits.parliament.uk"Library reference DEP2010-1917.Destruction will be carried out by a CESG accredited and approved supplier, securely and in accordance with established secure destruction policy, procedures and guidelines. These include compliance with the HMS IA Standard No. 5—Secure Sanitisation of Protectively Marked Sensitive Information. The destruction of the NIR data will involve the physical equipment holding that data being both degaussed and physically shredded. It is estimated that cancelling ID cards and the NIR will realise net savings of £86 million over the next four years. The Identity and Passport Service (IPS) will incur some one-off expenditure and asset write-offs during 2010-11, including the secure destruction of the NIR. The net costs in 2010-11 will be near to £5 million. We estimate up to £400,000 will be incurred to dismantle systems and securely destroy personal data.

Secondary information