Dan Byles welcomes ID Card U-Turn…

Former soldier Dan Byles, the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for North Warwickshire & Bedworth, today welcomed a partial Government U-turn over compulsory Identity Cards, but urged the Home Secretary to go further.

Home Secretary Alan Johnson this week performed another sharp Government about turn when he announced that the controversial Identity Card scheme would no longer be complulsory. Critics were quick to point out that a voluntary scheme would be next to useless, and would not justify the many billions of pounds that the scheme will still cost.

Significantly, Alan Johnson has not pledged to scrap the so-called ‘Big Brother’ database that will sit behind the ID card scheme – a Government database containing personal information on every UK citizen which has civil liberties campaigners very worried.

Dan, who has campaigned locally against ID cards and against the national DNA database, had this to say: “The Government are clearly in chaos over this programme. They can’t make up their minds what ID cards are for – they used to say it was about combating terrorism and crime, according to Johson it is now about helping eighteen year olds get a drink in a bar.

“I am very pleased that Alan Johnson is starting to row back from compulsory ID cards, which are profoundly un-British. I am opposed to them in principle – no Government employee should have the right to demand to see a British citizen’s papers; I am opposed to them on cost grounds – up to £18 billion by some estimates; and I am opposed to them on practical grounds – not a single country in the world which has ID cards has found them to help prevent crime or terrorism. They simply won’t work.

“But I’m concerned that Johnson has not mentioned the National Identity Register – the enormous computer database that will sit behind the ID cards themselves. This is the real threat to liberty and freedom. This is the expensive bit. Everyone reading this article will have all of their personal data put together into a dingle Government file, and heeld on this database. It will be a register of every British citizen.

“So well done Alan Johnson - a good start. Now please go the whole way and scrap this dangerous and expensive scheme altogether. If you don’t, the Conservatives have pledged that we will.”