Baroness criticises ID card proposals
Phil Miller writes in The Herald:
Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC, one of Britain’s leading defenders of human rights law, yesterday lambasted the proposed introduction of ID cards.
Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, she said she would “go to the wall” rather than accept their introduction in Britain. “I am damned if they (the government) will introduce them,” she said.
“There are many questions which this raises, but one is who could run such a central computer scheme when [this government] cannot organise a raffle? The problem with ID cards is that it changes the relationship a citizen has with the state, and there is no way back.”
She said that if the cards were introduced, the state would have instant access, along with NHS files, to a huge amount of personal information on anyone in the country.
At a packed event at the festival, Baroness Kennedy said she suspected that, although the card system, due to be a central plank of the next Labour manifesto, was initially to be voluntary, it would soon become compulsory.
