Scrap ID cards now, say Cabinet rebels
Controversial £5 billion scheme should be sacrificed to ease public spending crisis
Digg
del.icio.us
Facebook
Reddit
Google
Stumble Upon
Fark
Newsvine
YahooBuzz
Bebo
Twitter
Independent Minds
Senior cabinet ministers are privately discussing a plan to scrap the Government's £5bn identity cards programme as part of cuts to public spending, The Independent has learnt.
The ministers believe that some "sacred cows" will have to be sacrificed in the effort to reduce Britain's debt mountain. They are raising fresh questions over the future of the ID card programme as the Cabinet faces renewed pressure to find economies beyond a promised £9bn in "efficiency savings".
"My sense is that ID cards will not go ahead," a senior Cabinet Minister said. "We have to find savings somewhere, and it would be better to shelve schemes like this that aren't popular."
A ComRes poll for The Independent today finds 55 per cent of voters favour public spending cuts to reduce Britain's debts, against 38 per cent who want taxes to be increased. It also finds that the Tory lead over Labour has widened from 12 to 19 points since the Budget.
Issuing ID cards will cost more than £5bn over the next decade while scrapping the scheme now would leave the taxpayer with a relatively small compensation bill to pay.
Cabinet sceptics are preparing to use the public spending crunch to push for the scheme to be abandoned before the first cards are issued to British nationals this winter.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, has said the programme will be scrapped if his party wins the election expected to take place in May 2010.
But Gordon Brown has so far proved immovable on the issue, with Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, insisting last month that the Government was "on track" to introduce ID cards.
However, there is a growing recognition among ministers that after Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, signalled severe spending cuts in the Budget, some "big ticket" projects will have to be scrapped to help reduce the national deficit. The Home Office is widely considered to be particularly vulnerable to cuts.
Stephen Byers, the Blairite former cabinet minister, has become the first senior Labour figure to acknowledge that ID cards may have to be shelved. He also suggested the expensive planned replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system be abandoned.
ID cards were championed by Tony Blair and by David Blunkett when he was the Home Secretary.
Mr Brown was initially hostile to the scheme because of its cost but he became an enthusiastic convert, arguing that it would tackle terrorism, organised crime, illegal immigration and identity fraud.
The first ID cards for British citizens will be issued to some airport workers by the end of the year. A widespread roll-out of the scheme is scheduled to begin in 2011. Foreign nationals have already received the first cards.
The Home Office puts the cost of introducing ID cards for Britons at £4.7bn over the next decade and the additional cost of introducing them for foreign nationals at £326m.
There would be a further unspecified cost to Whitehall departments for accessing the biometric database that will underpin the cards. The Government has just signed contracts worth £750m to set up the scheme, one to upgrade passport application systems and the other to set up the database. The contract for the ID cards themselves will be awarded later this year.
Ms Smith has told MPs that cancelling the contracts would cost the Government "in the region of £40m in the early years".
The £25bn replacement for Trident is the most high-profile major Government project that is at risk, but the cabinet source predicted that it would be saved because of the impact that its cancellation would have on jobs, principally at Barrow-in-Furness, where the submarines are built.
The Trident replacement was designed for the Cold War to penetrate well-defended targets in the Soviet Union or China, and opponents say it has been made obsolete by the new threat of nuclear attack from rogue states lacking sophisticated defences.
"There is a case for shelving Trident Two, but the number of jobs that go with it is just too great," said the Cabinet source. "I just can't see us cancelling a Trident replacement now."
Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrats Treasury spokesman, said last week that he believed ID cards and Trident were "sacred cows" that would have to go as part of cuts in public spending.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Offensive or abusive comments will be removed and your IP logged and may be used to prevent further submission. In submitting a comment to the site, you agree to be bound by the Independent Minds Terms of Service.
- Print Article
- Email Article
-
Click here for copyright permissions
Copyright 2009 Independent News and Media Limited
Comments
Teh gov.t not going along with trident replacement something that john biffen, simon hughes and michael portillo agree on , on the other hand has to be welcomed
HOO...RAH...!!! Have these political morons finally started to realise what the rest of us ordinary Brits. have known all along. That the ID idea was a nonsensical birdbraind one from the outstart.! Just another
way to expedite us into international bankruptcy.! It wouldn't have worked anyway.....There are enough illegals gypsies, travellers, etc roaming around the uk looking for victims to rob, rape and murder....to start a seperate Country...these people are NEVER going to cooperate if or when authorities demand to view their ID cards...there will just be additional shouting and assault matches between them and our enemic cops.....these parasites don't fear consequences.....they look forward to spending time in our prison resorts....compared to the hell holes and treatment where they came from. Never mind ID cards...put the money to better use....5 billion would be better spent on all the jobless, homeless British Citizens, who, thanks to government incompetency are now suffering their miseries.!
It is not sufficient that ID cards be scrapped on the grounds that they cost a bit. They should be scrapped because they are a deranged, unscrupulous, undemocratic folly conceived by the most irredeemably nasty, self-obsessed and arrogant government in British history.
Notice how speed camera's have fallen out of fashion with local councils and local police authorities now that they no longer split the revenue from the fines but are obliged to hand it over to the UK Treasury while retaining the expense and maintenance of the camera's that they rushed to install. Surprise, surprise many are now being removed!
I sincerely hope that this ID nonsense is finally behind us. Naturally, we must expect small-minded, power-dazed hypocrites like Jaqui Smith to cling to such fantasms, and as for Brown - well, we are long past a point where we could expect anything like reason to govern his pronouncements, but all in all, this is an encouraging sign. The wood's not out the fire yet, of course.
The Netherlands does not have an ID card system and yet does not suffer greater crime, more benefit abuse or be subject to higher levels of terrorism.
The value of introducing an ID card system to the UK has never been properly analysed or even discussed in any meaningful fashion. Why introduce an expensive complicated scheme that will erode civil liberties and human rights when the case for it has never been argued properly, let alone approved or accepted by the public.
Indeed. The Netherlands has a much more mature approach to just about every issue that Britain fails on and continues to fail on by having successive governments who believe that can shape society into something that fits their ideological fantasies.
Would an ID card have prevented Jacqui Smith from taking the piss with her expenses claims?
Wouln't it be cheaper to retrain every single one of those workers,and invest in industries and jobs for them that have long term future potential,rather than wasting money we don't have shoring up jobs that are already pointless.
What wimps the Brits have become; just a shadow of the independent and freedom/privacy-loving individuals of my youth. Very sad. My generation was the last to experience real freedom - hardfought for in two world wars. If the dead of those wars (including my relatives) were to return it would be with the realization their efforts were wasted.
For those who will blather on about terrorism, crime, blah blah blah, I say poppycock. Since when has crime prevention, perpetrators being a small proportion of the population, become cause to curtail the daily routine of the vast majority?
We were told that terrorists are out to 'destroy our freedoms' (Bush-ism); well, fellow-Brits, they have done just that. Democracy is dead, in the UK and elsewhere.
Personally, have given up on visiting 'home' as I refuse to submit to the degrading conditions imposed by airport security on perfectly law-abiding travellers. Please refrain from wailing about it all being for my safety; am quite capable of judging that for myself.
It's *not* that the British public is unwilling to change these issues, but that they mostly have learned to feel un-empowered, helpless in the face of their lack of true representation, by bureacratic obfuscation and graft, with limited and or unavailable means to be heard ("consultation", anyone?), and more and more frightened by government scaremongering and the police and state abuses of power.
This in my view is like the Germany of the late thirties, and it is time that the people of Britain - and England in particular - acknowledged that they must use whatever means they have to make those in power regain respect of the public and by the public, because if you want a society that believes in itself, you must treat it with respect, not threaten, dis-empower, vilify and gag it.
It's not too late! We just have to become righteously angrier. I'm heartened by the comments here.
A load of rubbish from beginning to end, but the apethetic British public would have swallowed it - I'd be ashamed if the only reason it was scrapped was because of economic reasons and not social ones!!
As such I see ID cards as a waste of money, as well as an assault on our civil liberties. It seems to me that a very expensive scheme uncertain benifits has to be sacrificed before cuts are made to thing sthat are known to be benificial such as health and education
It would be interesting to see whether or not the EU would allow Britain to opt-out of ID cards - it looks unlikely
This goes much further than just ID cards themselves - the EU has a broader agenda to interfere with your privacy.
A new five year plan for justice and home affairs that emphasises the surveillance state and keeping digital records of all citizens' activities
http://www.statewatch.org/analyses/t
Plans to fingerprint all children, compulsorily over the age of 12
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/jul/3
An EU initiative to continuously track the speed and position of vehicles, about to go on trial in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/3
Introducing databases tracking political activists even before 9/11.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/sep/1
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/may/3
Let's not forget, the retention of all phone calls and emails - so-called 'data retention' was brought in under EU directive (2006/24/EC)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentis
(incidentally, approved by the European Parliament)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/20
This policy was brought in not under anti-terrorism but under economic policy (the so-called 'first pillar' of EU law).
Write to your MEP
This is the euro-election campaign - the election is on 4 June
Follow the steps on this website - it will tell you how to contact them
UK Office of the European Parliament
http://www.europarl.org.uk/section/y
Unlike the British Parliament, each Euro-constituency in Britain has three MEPs, not just one. We each have three different MEPs representing us, perhaps from three different parties.
We should all have such availability - especially in the press - to democratic process! Perhaps the Indie would be so wise and kind to set up a page that enables people to make their voices heard and to be able to lobby politicians etc? It is still legal, after all! And I'm sure many people need to know what avenues they can use to do this!
http://www.vimeo.com/4165434
Britain is more than capable of retaining a nuclear deterrent, just not in the hands of the Royal Navy. The RAF could easily be retasked with air-launched cruise missiles and less costly boats built instead to keep the shipyards open.
ID cards are a joke and not even worth discussing. A mere frivolity in these straitened times. However the Trident subs are vastly overpriced and need to be cancelled in favour of more conventional shipbuilding that is actually value for money.
I will go further with this...who the hell is going to attack us anyway that wouldn't have done so by now.!
We don't need nuclear weaponry because we are small Island and if any REAL military power like russia or china eg. wanted to eliminate us it wouldn't take much effort.!
Having said that, I'd happily put faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster if it could put a stop to identity cards, which would constitute a constant onslaught of false accusations of being a terrorist, an illegal immigrant, a gangster or a fraudster against everyone in the country.
As for the COST, BRITAIN is the 3rd RICHEST country in the WORLD and has plently in the COFFERS to pay for without coming out of the people's pocket.
They should use some of the money they get from the Euorpean government that they don't spend on the country!!!!!!!!!! What are they keeping the money for?
There are NO POCKETS IN SHROUDS.
Also carrying a bit of plastic IS NOT THE ISSUE !!! Carrying a form of ID - IS NOT THE ISSUE !!!!!!
Sorry to shout about this but the issue is what information is stored on that card and who has access to that information and for what purposes is it accessed. The government has a terrible record on information safety - by holding all of this information together (and god knows what else) we're being put more at risk not less.
The ID card scheme in Spain, or Germany etc. etc. is not the same scheme as is proposed here - look into it, you'd be surprised!! The UK Government plan to sell the info to make MONEY - that's why it'll probably go ahead. Insurance companies will love to get their hands on it to put up your premiums!!!
Tip of the iceburg - I could tell you more but don't be blinded. Get all the facts! Forget this - "If you've got nothing to hide" bullshit!! If you've got nothing to hide why do you close the door when you go to the toilet ??? It's about privacy!