The DWP FoI Team’s letter to Mark Oaten is at pains to say that “… the original DWP estimates set out in the attached information, while they were the best available at the time, are no longer valid”.

In the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s enquiry into the ID cards scheme, the Home Office were at pains to say that “… it is important to reiterate that the enrolment trial was a trial of process and customer experience. It was not designed as a trial to look at performance of the technology per se”. This, despite the fact that the Key Findings section of the report on the UKPS Biometrics Enrolment Trial concern the performance of the biometrics being trialled.

There is some sort of denial going on here. Denial of the facts. An inability to face the evidence. An irrational faith which becomes more obstinate the more it fails to correspond with reality.

There are other examples. Biometrics, for example. The Home Office cling to the notion that the biometrics they have chosen to identify us are nearly 100% reliable when, in fact, they seem to be more like 80% reliable in practice. And the use of smart cards. Why are they ignoring the ID we already have, in the form of our mobile phones?

Anyway, psychological problem no. 1, denial.

If you write to the Home Secretary, or the Permanent Secretary, about the ID cards scheme, you get a letter back from the Identity and Passport Service (IPS). Mere mortals cannot get an answer from the people they are writing to. These people are sealed off from the outside world, insulated, perhaps jealously guarded by IPS, in the hope that they won’t be found out and will keep their jobs.

Another symptom of denial, I suppose, but there is something else. The response from IPS is always signed “Yours faithfully, On behalf of the Identity and Passport Service”. There is no name. Once you have got over the irony of an identity service whose officers cannot be identified, you start to wonder whether this practice isn’t perhaps illegal. Isn’t there a law saying that civil servants should give their name in their dealings with the public? Or, if not a law, at least a convention? It may not be illegal, it may not be unconventional but, at the very least, it is rude. Or is it sinister?

One thing is for sure. It is a sign of guilt. Juvenile, obtuse, sulky guilt.

Psychological problem no. 2, guilt.

IPS have good reason to be in denial. The facts are against them. They have good reason to feel guilty. They are wasting their time and our money. They are, quite pointlessly, making themselves the object of public ridicule and loathing.

People can only take so much guilt. There is a limit to how much of reality you can deny before you go mad. It is difficult at dinner, when you meet someone new, if you can’t tell them what your job is without fear of derision or vituperation.

Is there a psychiatrist in the house? How do we help these sick people to get out of their awful situation? And what awful things should we expect them to do next, to themselves and/or to us, if they can’t get out of it?

Perhaps in this case the question should be “What would Stalin do next?” The sad fact is that we know the answer. When he met such civil disobedience he filled his prison camps, and murdered vast swathes of his population. How else could the next British government cope with such determined resistance. After all 30% of 65 million is 19.5 million. I don’t think that the total prison estate has places for 100,000 at present! From the government’s point of view it could be a good tactic. The Russian population became fairly docile after Stalin’s purges. I imagine that the British population would also become docile after a similar purge by the (ex? communist) home secretary.