An ineffective, illiberal and expensive idea that just will not go away

Consultation, openness, debate. These are good things, and so should we not be pleased that the Home Secretary is to publish a discussion paper outlining the various options for identity cards and inviting responses?

No, because the basic premise of identity cards is flawed, and has been found to be so by governments of both political colours and all shades of concern for liberty since they were abolished in Britain in 1952. Peter Lilley, the former Secretary of State for Social Security, explained yesterday with his usual clinical logic why the Conservatives rejected the idea. He is personally liberal, but was a member of a government which was potentially quite as authoritarian as the present one. Yet not even Michael Howard could be persuaded that identity cards were a good idea.

The essential point is simple. Making them compulsory would represent an increase in the power of the state over the individual, making it an offence to be forgetful or inefficient. Far from helping to fight crime, a compulsory scheme would create thousands more criminals.

If carrying identity cards is not made compulsory, on the other hand, and David Blunkett insists he has no intention of doing this, what is the point of them? It has come to something when 27 Labour MPs are unwilling to take their own Home Secretary at his word, having signed a House of Commons motion opposing compulsory identity cards, which they must suspect is Mr Blunkett's ultimate objective.

That is the context for the options which have been floated for a middle way between compulsory and voluntary cards. Mr Blunkett says he does not want to make it compulsory for people to carry identity cards, except for asylum-seekers, although his document this week may canvass the idea that, if someone is found not to have a card on their person, they may be escorted home or required to produce it at a police station later.

It is true that the main category whose members cannot readily confirm their identity any other way is that of asylum-seekers. Individuals often arrive here without any papers at all. But they have to record their fingerprints when they apply for refugee status. What is the point, as Mr Lilley asked yesterday, in insisting that they carry cards with their fingerprints encoded on an electronic chip when they are likely, if asked for them, to have their real fingerprints about their persons?

Dressing up identity cards as "entitlement cards" which have to be shown when claiming state benefits makes no difference to the underlying idea – although it gives a clue to the simplistic thinking in Whitehall which is constantly returning to this impractical, expensive and illiberal non-starter.

The simplicity of a universal means of checking identities is deceptive. It seems to offer a simple way to detect crime, stop benefit fraud and control illegal immigration all at once. But the police say that, when they apprehend people, establishing their identities is rarely a problem and not a serious factor in today's low clear-up rates. Identity cards would only cause tensions between them and ethnic minorities. As for benefit fraud, the Government already has a hard enough time keeping track of National Insurance numbers – why should a new layer of records make enforcement easier?

We believe one of the options in this week's consultation paper will be to decline to introduce identity cards at all. That is the option Mr Blunkett should choose – and he should concentrate on policies which are likely to work.