Gordon Brown’s back door to compulsory ID cards
Alan Travis writes in the Guardian:
“And so, conference, I can say to you today: in the next parliament, there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens.”
Gordon Brown’s promise not to make identity cards compulsory for British citizens during the next parliament really should have read that they will be compulsory only if you want to leave the country or legally drive a car.
This is because every British citizen who renews or applies for a new passport will automatically be registered on the national identity database anyway.
This was made clear in June, when the new home secretary, Alan Johnson, completed his review of the future of the £4.9bn ID cards project by saying that Labour would not introduce legislation after the next general election making the scheme compulsory.
That was widely misreported as “Johnson drops ID cards”. But his review left all the main elements of the national identity card scheme in place.
As critics pointed out at the time, the automatic inclusion on the national identity register of the details of anybody who renewed their passport – or, for that matter, their driving licence – amounted to introducing a compulsory identity card scheme by the back door.
