ID cards – the death knell?
Alistair Darling made a vain attempt today to deflect attention away from his failed Pre Budget Report by attempting to curry favour with teh electorate by annoucing that Biometric passports are probably as far as the government needs to go and there is no need for ID cards.
Alistair Darling has signalled an end to the government’s controversial ID card scheme.The chancellor said there is “probably no need” to “go further” than the new biometric passports in a newspaper interview published today.
Looks like someone forgot to tell the Home Office the news as their website had the following to say on the matter……
Who forgot to tell the Home Office then?
Got to love the way that our Government knows how to talk to each other………
Oh, and before i forget. Which party has been a staunch advocate against ID Cards – yes thats right – the Liberal Democrats. So why aren’t they on the national website now yelling about and making the most of this obvious piece of back tracking my the Labour Party?
Probably because it’s not an obvious piece of backtracking at all. It’s business as usual for the National Identity Scheme.
The cost and complexity of the ID card project comes not from the pieces of plastic themselves, but from the National Identity Register, a vastly expensive series of interlinked databases. This will store more interlinked information about you than any Government system in the western world, and make it widely accessible to hundreds of thousands of civil servants, a privacy disaster waiting to happen. When you get an ID card (and soon when you get a passport, later when you get a CRB check, and so on…) you’re on the database for life, with no opt-out.
The ID card is merely a physical token which relates to one entry in the National Identity Register; Darling’s not proposing doing away with the database, just using passports as the physical token instead. The £300 cost to every UK taxpayer to support the underlying system is still there, and no money has been saved. David Blunkett was calling for this six months ago.
This is a PR gesture to make people think the danger has gone away, nothing more.
Hi Dave and thanks for the comment. I happen to agree with you on this and there was a certain amount of irony and sarcasm in the post that i think probably didn’t come across as i had intended! This government has systematically chipped away at our civil liberties for the last few years and i see no reason why Alistair Darling making his off the cuff comment as he did will change this in any way shape or form. If anything, if re-elected, I think that the Labour Party will push on with this with even more vigour.
The comment from Darling was purely in my mind a pretty poor attempt at deflecting attention away from the alleged infighting and disagreements going on between himself and Gordon Brown over the Pre Budget report and a classic example of Labour trying to use the media to deflect attention from the real issues.
Hmm, possibly I didn’t get the sarcasm because I’m over-sensitive – when I’m out running NO2ID street stalls in Manchester, I do hear people telling me that the scheme has been scrapped or is purely voluntary. Usually I invite them to consider whether I’d really be standing in the cold handing out leaflets if that were true…
And i tell you KEEP GOING with it. We simply cannot allow this government to continue to strip away our priavcy and rights as they have done unchecked for last few years.