Lib Dems slam ID cards

2.10.00pm GMT Tue 4th Jan 2005

Dr Sue Stebbing with petition

Liberal Democrats have branded government plans for ID cards a fiasco in the making. Dr Sue Stebbing, prospective parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats in South Swindon has slammed the governments plans to introduce ID cards as pointless, expensive, intrusive and doomed to failure.

Dr Sue Stebbing said:

"The Labour government tells us that it will cost £3 billion to introduce ID cards and that they will soon become compulsory. Why spend that amount of money when there is no evidence at all that ID cards will make us more secure from terrorism or reduce crime and when the government has proved incapable of making existing computer systems work properly. And can we really trust this government with our personal information?"

"Its a fiasco in the making"

The ID card system will depend on the Government introducing a vast new computer system capable of holding information about every citizen and determining who is eligible for public services. The government does not have a good track record history on installing computer systems. The Passport Agency, Child Support Agency, Department for Work and Pensions, Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue and Student Loan Company have all experienced well publicised problems in getting their expensive new systems to do what they were designed to do. Many people have suffered hardship and inconvenience as a result. Then last week the national fingerprint computer system crashed spectacularly, bringing essential police work to a halt.

Dr Stebbing continued:

"If a similar failure happened with ID cards people could be denied access to essential public services, pensions and benefits while the mess was sorted out.

"If the government has £3 billion pounds to spend on security the money would be much better spent on putting more police officers on the streets, giving them better equipment and reducing the amount of paperwork they have to do. Instead of getting these very basic and simple things right, Tony Blair seems to be hell-bent on creating an incompetent Big Brother State and charging us dearly for the privilege.

"This whole scheme is a fiasco in the making, doomed to be an expensive failure. These cards will cost an estimated £85 per person to introduce. "

Tory candidate for South Swindon has spoken in complete contradiction to his own party leader, Michael Howard by saying: "There is no evidence that compulsory ID cards will stop crime and international terrorism - quite simply, they are a complete waste of time" Swindon Advertiser 23/12/04

Proof that one Conservative says one thing to please one audience, and another says the complete opposite to another audience. What do the Tories believe? Answers on a postcard please…

What the news papers say:

"The opposition of the Liberal Democrats to identity cards has been a beacon in a bleak Parliament...It was left to the Liberal Democrats to confront the new "9/11 authoritarians". Mark Oaten asked how the cards would forestall any known terrorist outrage, and got no answer. Simon Hughes asked how a card that need not be carried on the person could help the police during a manhunt...The present House of Commons...must be the most supine in living memory. It is the first to have voted for an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression, the first to have voted for imprisonment without trial and the first to have voted for compulsory identity cards in peacetime. Only the Liberal Democrats, to their credit, stood out against the administration." Simon Jenkins, The Times, 22/12/2004.

"For the first time I shall vote for the Liberal Democrats because they do understand that the identity card debate is about the just role of government and I suspect tens of thousands of instinctive Conservatives will do the same [in 2005]." Stephen Robinson, The Telegraph, 21/12/2004.