Current estimates of the smart meter elements of the project are around £3.6 billion over the next 20 years, which seem hopelessly out of whack. The ID Card project – which stalled halfway through – spiralled to more than £5 billion. And that was just about giving everyone a small bit of plastic with some database tech to support. Smart meters and the associated grid overhaul will be in another league altogether in terms of scale. Potentially one or two wireless devices installed in every home in the UK, capable of talking not only to the utilities smart grid infrastructure but to the so-called “In-Home Display” (which lets consumers see what they are consuming) as well as electrical devices in the home. Don’t let anyone tell you this is not a massive undertaking.

There is obviously the issue of how much consumers can expect to save. It goes without saying that utilities fully expect to make “efficiencies” by being able to sack meter-readers, for example, and do everything remotely. But will more granular information really translate into smaller bills for energy consumers? In the US, where the rollout is accelerating due to finite availability of the government funding to support it, there have been reports that smart meter users are actually finding their bills going up. Consumers might have more accurate information on what they are using – but so do the utilities, and some are putting this information to good effect.

And the comparisons with ID Cards don’t stop at cost projections. Security and privacy are also a fundamental issue. The government is taking pains to make sure there is a public consultation on the process, to make sure that it doesn’t feel like this is simply all about streaming information from utilities to consumers homes. But the aggressive timetable for the project has pushed some experts – commentating on similarly tight deadlines in the US – to postulate that security and privacy will take a back-seat to rolling-out the devices as fast as possible. Get them out there and worry about the other stuff later.

A senior GP is urging other doctors to boycott the online medical records system by refusing to upload their patients’ details, it has emerged.

Dr Paul Cundy, former chairman of the British Medical Association’s IT committee has urged GPs across the country to block the uploading of patient records at their surgeries.

He fears the system is not safe after it was found that one in ten of the records uploaded so far in Birmingham contained errors about patients that could lead to harm, including mistakes about their allergies and medications.

The government is reviewing the Summary Care Record, which will see every patient in England with an electronic medical record that can be accessed by doctors anywhere in the country, unless they specifically opt out.

However in the meantime records are still being uploaded.

Dr Cundy believes the system should be opt-in.

He said he will put a block on his patients’ records at his surgery in Wimbledon, south London, so they cannot be uploaded without the patient’s specific consent and he urged others to do the same.

Voters should be required to present proof of identity when they go to the polls as part of a massive overhaul of Britain’s voting system, the official elections watchdog said today.

The Electoral Commission has called on ministers to take ‘immediate action’ to prevent a repeat of the chaos in the General Election which left thousands unable to cast their ballots.

It also warned that the coalition Government’s ambitious programme of democratic reforms was likely to add to the pressure on the machinery of electoral administration.

It said that ministers needed to look at ways of strengthening the system in order to maintain public confidence and avoid a repeat of the chaos in May.

Among the measures it recommended was a review of the case for requiring proof of identity for voters casting their vote at polling stations.

Currently only voters in Northern Ireland are required to present some form of photographic identification when they go to vote.

The commission said that it received complaints from electors who were unable to vote because someone else was already issued with a ballot paper in their name.

Commission chairwoman Jenny Watson said: ‘We are lucky to have inherited a trust-based system from previous generations. But this cannot endure forever.

‘The basic building blocks of electoral administration need long-term support and reform in order to ensure that voters can be sure that their vote counts.’

Forms of acceptable ID would include a passport or current driving licence.

A £1.2billion ‘electronic borders’ system which is supposed to protect Britain from illegal immigrants, terrorists and foreign criminals descended into shambles last night.

The Government sacked the U.S.-based firm paid by Labour to introduce the programme after it was hit by chronic delays.

As a result, 100million journeys a year in and out of the UK will continue to go unrecorded by officials in charge of the massive ‘e-Borders’ project.

Ministers will also remain unable comprehensively to count people in and out of the country – leaving them in the dark about the true scale of illegal immigration.

At the earliest, it will now be 2015 before the UK Border Agency can check and record every arrival and departure.

The e-Borders system had its origins in a grilling of Tony Blair by Jeremy Paxman during the 2005 general election campaign.

The then-PM shifted uneasily in his chair while being asked by Mr Paxman – no fewer than 20 times – how many illegal immigrants were in the UK.

Pathetically, he was unable to give a satisfactory answer.

How real is the Liberal Democrats’ dedication to civil liberties? This may seem an odd question, given that the protection of liberty would seem to be among the very few areas on which liberals of all political persuasions agree, and that the decision to end stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 was announced on Thursday.

But to what, exactly, is the party committed? Clearly there is a strong libertarian thread, a belief that the big brother state needs to be shaken off, and this explains the hostility to identity cards, CCTV cameras and the retention of DNA samples. Another theme is a romantic dedication to the past, with promises to “protect historic freedoms” through a return to jury trial, to “restore rights to non-violent protest” and to act to prevent “the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences”.

If carried forward in an unambiguous manner, these policies will have big implications in terms of criminal law enforcement, the safety of the general public and the administration of justice. Nick Clegg’s website consultation on which laws should be abolished, Your Freedom, gives a taste of the marauding jungle of free individuals in which it would seem many libertarians of this sort believe we should live – Hobbesians, but without a belief in any need for Leviathan.

Today Tom Brake MP has now replied that these same actions indicate that they’re committed to restoring Civil Liberties:

These attacks, and the other spurious accusations contained in his article, are simply unfounded. Gearty appears to be a cheerleader for Labour’s authoritarian streak, to the point that he objects, astonishingly, to the coalition cutting down the Big Brother state through curbs on CCTV, DNA retention and the abolition of ID cards. Most of the rest of the country is delighted.

Similarly, most people are delighted that the government ended the use of Labour’s section 44 stop-and-search powers, especially those that have been disproportionately targeted: the young, ethnic minorities and protesters. Gearty claims that this action is only because of a “hostile” Strasbourg court judgment. The fact is the coalition has acted quickly, in refreshing contrast to a Labour government that resorted to every delaying tactic it could find to resist implementing the court’s judgment that DNA retention powers were too broad.

Census-taking is an imperfect art at the best of times. The U.K.’s 1991 census is widely regarded as so inaccurate that statisticians ignore it completely, and the 2001 census took flak for undercounting. The U.K.’s Office of National Statistics (ONS) has for years been steadily working toward an alternative in the form of the Beyond 2011 project. The ONS and the government won’t commit to any specific plan just yet, but talking to the Daily Telegraph, Maude suggested that the government might move toward a population count every five years, one that’s much cheaper since it would be based on administrative data already available: post office address lists, credit-card checking registries, and so on.

But the U.K. doesn’t need “an unsatisfactory stitched-together patchwork of information,” says David Coleman, professor of demographics at Oxford University, calling the Beyond 2011 project a “ludicrous fudge.” Glen O’Hara, a historian at Oxford Brookes University, agrees: “These sources are not likely to be any substitute. They are mostly characterized by a near-comical set of gaps, omissions, conflicts of interest and data protection issues.”

These data protection issues could well prove a sticking point. The U.K.’s center-right government might be reluctant to throw its support behind the Beyond 2011 project, especially as one of the first acts of the new coalition was to scrap the previous Labour government’s ID card scheme. The plan, reviled because of data protection and personal freedom concerns, was linked to an incomplete population database known as the National Identity Register — itself now scrapped, having hardly been used. A reliable register of addresses — costing £10 million ($15 million)—has been put together for the 2011 census. But licensing and data-sharing restrictions block the register from further use.

What the country needs, says Coleman, is a purpose-built, regularly updating population register like those that operate in countries such as Denmark and Finland. Based on information like changes of address and birth and death notifications, population registers can be easily integrated into other databases and don’t rely on the decade-long guesswork of the census. “Some of the most aggressively democratic and liberal countries in Europe have got population registers, and [have] not fallen into fascist dictatorships,” he argues.