Absolutely right of course, but there are problematic assumptions, nevertheless. The politician announced a jaw-dropping fantasy, that illegal immigrants and their illegal employers would suddenly stop business, for the lack of one document, when the whole point of the entry to UK and the whole point of the employment was based on the happy collusion of working without any documents at all.
The same politician instantly, and repeatedly, reassured the interviewer that the lack of this document would not in any way hinder mass immigration, legal or not, nor reduce international health tourism or benefits tourism and multiple benefits claim fraud, because it would never be requested for any taxpayer funded service. It would exclusively be used to prevent legitimate employers doing what legitimate employers already don't do. Legitimate employers already need,( with compulsion of serious penalties), to file copies of employees' passport, proof of right to work, tax and n.i.ns numbers etc.
By the way, an 83 year old may be running marathons, or businesses, or may be changing career or taking on extra work, so may not invariably be fully occupied being "retired". More to the point, the over-80's get a LOWER pension than the newly retired in their 60's. What's more, in a spiteful extra bit of Governmental Age Discrimination, the disparity is built in, and will increasingly impoverish the very oldest State Pensioners, due to a percentage linking. At 83, 93 and at 103, these will be the poorest of the poor.
UK has the worlds worst effective State Pension. The OLDEST are the least likely to have any private pension. Women have lower pensions than men, but the oldest women had the least likelihood of being in work attracting private pensions. A lot of very old ladies do not own their own homes. (Even if they do, they will typically be falling in around them, because they can't afford upkeep or repair)
If renting, they compete aganst mass population increase, against governments' ideological dislike of private landlords, resulting in many going out of business, and against council bribes/ incentives to private landlords, attempting to corner all available habitable space. Also, against an ever increasing mass of young people who refuse to learn degrees or anything else online, at home, while working, and instead insist on three year parties at council taxpayers expense, and insist on taking up habitable buildings while there is mass homelessness.
The old people, and the disabled people, who have to find somewhere to live, are not considered as being in any priority housing need, because they don't have a child under 16 with them, and they are not illegal immigrants. (Therefore they ought to live in a doorway or a ditch?).
In some areas there are twenty applicants for every letting, and computers select young double income earners with parents who put their own homes as bond. Charities are for addicts, or migrants, or alcoholics, or care leavers, or prison leavers, or ex service, etc. But never for ordinary old people or disabled people, if they have committed the crime of having any life-savings, INSTEAD OF having the private pensions they couldn't get.
Guess what the wartime and postwar people often did, knowing they would have no private pension? Some created little businesses and lived over the shop, selling up and leaving when too tired to carry on, and hoping the proceeds would last them out for their final days. Or, they lived entire lifetimes of scrimping and carefully saving every spare penny, saving to see their lives out. They have the below-minimum survival level of income from basic, old rate, state pension. Without private pension, the remaining money in their savings bank must buy them any home help or extra heating, or taxi fares to the doctor, and pay "for a decent funeral", and "not to be a burden" or a "beggar".
Having savings at all means they cannot get council housing nor pension credit nor any means tested reductions in paying full council tax etc. Having savings means they pay in full for any social care plus pay a surcharge, to subsidise neighbours who have been more spendthrift. It seems amazing it can be lawful that when two customers buy identical goods or services, one customer can be forced to pay towards what another customer gets, merely because one has saved and the other has squandered. (Or, has hidden. ) But being disabled and/or being old means being often demonised and almost never respected, nor sympathised with. Kittens and kiddies are 'cute', but few people, or politicians, care about old people.