If there could be one free card for everything, that would be a miracle. It's not going to happen.

As far as the civil service is concerned, there are several checks we make to ensure that the people applying for various things are who they say they are, but it's still very easy to slip past an overworked system/telephone operator and find out all manner of things. The internal system we brought in to verify internal callers ~(i.e., one HMG office calling another HMG office) is so time consuming and user unfriendly, that only once in the 3 months it's been running, have I been asked for my code.

I don't have a criminal record, I've never appeared in court and apart from one parking ticket and a bus lane infringement, have never done anything I've needed to hide from officials..... But neither do I have £90 to spare to prove who I am.

LTS