Michael Cross, writing in the Guardian, thinks the Database State is an electoral gift to the Conservative Party: These gifts are likely to be deployed in the Conservatives’ first potentially election-winning manifesto in a generation. We have already been promised measures to cancel the ID card, and the government this week handed the opposition another treat by placing the largest chunk of the business with US-based firms. The legally compromised national DNA database would also be scrapped. If the government doesn’t get there first, the Tories have promised a close look at the NHS’s “hubristic supercomputer”, a reference to the NHS National Programme for IT in England. This too will be popular – though it could be awkward if the review concludes the problem is that the programme has spent too little, rather than too much, money.