ID Cards: No Change

Henry Porter writes:

The mildly jubilant scenes at the Labour party conference when Gordon Brown announced that there would be no compulsory ID cards in the next parliament tell you one thing: that people in the hall understand how unpopular the ID card is and what a lead weight it will be at the next election. But of course the speech makes little difference and by no means does it signal an end to the government's ID management lunacy.

This is exactly what Brown said:

[In] the last two years we have looked again at how we can give the best security to our British citizens while never undermining their liberties.

We will reduce the information British citizens have to give for the new biometric passport to no more than that required for today's passport.

And so conference, I can say to you today, in the next parliament there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens.

With this non-announcement, which follows one or two modest changes publicised by Alan Johnson in the summer, Labour hopes to draw the poison from the issue while retaining its long-term ambitions. It is a sleight of hand that is familiar to anyone who has watched the ducking and diving on this policy over this last five years.

There are many who now vaguely believe that the ID card is no longer an issue but the lie to this is given by the fact that Home Office is preparing to spend £500,000 on advertising campaign, which features cartoon fingerprints, between now and December.

So far about 90,000 cards have been issued. Ahead of schedule the government is going to start issuing cards to skilled migrants when they renew their visas – its is difficult to see how this isn't effectively compulsory – and from this month the UK Border Agency will trial issuing cards at Post Office in order to speed up enrolment process.

So the full energy of this disastrously wasteful and intrusive policy remains in tact. Gordon Brown's announcement that a reduction in the amount of personal detail required for ID cards and passports will mean that people's civil liberties are being respected is obvious nonsense. For one thing he did not say by how much the government would reduce the 50 odd pieces of personal data currently required. The fact remains that the identity management policies of this government are built for the convenience of the state, not of the citizen, and Brown's speech makes not the slightest difference to that strategy.