Sam Talbot Rice writes in Public Servant magazine:
So far, we have heard the language of personalisation of public services, but have not seen the reality. Rather than devolving power and choice, ministers have set upon a course of transformational government that seeks to collect, in the words of their adviser, “a deep truth about the [...]

Mary Riddell writes in the Daily Telegraph:
We cannot, in human or financial terms, afford ID cards and the assorted panoply of a surveillance state whose likely costs, according to the Convention on Modern Liberty, equal £33 billion, or the price of keeping our Armed Forces on active service abroad. In the reductive world of economic [...]

Tony Colliins writes in Computer Weekly:
Publication of internal reports into the feasibility of the government’s ID cards programme would have jeopardised support from government agencies.
The claim was made by Robin Woodland, director of policy at the Identity and Passport Service, in evidence to the Information Tribunal. The tribunal was considering whether two initial Gateway “zero” [...]

Mark Ballard writes in Computer Weekly:
Staff at 30 local authorities have been responsible for “serious security breaches” in the government database that will form the core of the national ID cards programme.
Local authority staff have viewed sensitive personal records on the Customer Information System (CIS) run by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), [...]

Andrew Grice writes in the Independent:
David Blunkett, who introduced the idea of identity cards when Home Secretary, will issue a stark warning to the Government tomorrow that it is in danger of abusing its power by taking Britain towards a “Big Brother” state.
At the 21st annual law lecture in Essex University’s Colchester campus, Mr Blunkett [...]