Data fiasco forces ministers into ID cards review

The news that some young civil servant had managed to lose the personal details of some 25 million Brits in the post had me thinking that the Labour Party's wish to introduce ID cards into this country must be all but dead in the water.

Today, astonishingly, the government tries to stumble on with it's plans, albeit whilst drastically reducing the amount of information that such cards should hold.

Ministers are to look at scaling back plans for identity cards in response to the catastrophic loss of the personal information of 25 million people, including their bank records and addresses.

The information commissioner, Richard Thomas, urged ministers yesterday to review the amount of data they intend to amass on the national identity register, and Labour backbenchers previously supportive of ID cards backed his view.

At a time when the government continually warn citizens of the dangers of identity theft, it seems to me incredible that the government are attempting to continue with a scheme where they amass lots of information about their citizens in one vast database which will be vulnerable to public disclosure in the exact same way as the details of twenty five million people have now been made public. Human error.

The notion of an ID card has always appalled me, as the amount of information being collected was always deeply intrusive. The fact that the amount of information being collected is to be reduced is a good thing, but it doesn't address the central point of why the government wish us to carry ID cards in the first place.

There is no indication that these cards will help in the war on terror and the government have long ago abandoned their pretence that such cards would aid in this process. So what ARE they for?

There are hints these cards will aid in the fight against illegal immigration, but very few of us buy that nonsense as anything other than the wink towards racists that it is. ID cards will be able to be forged just as anything else can be forged, so how will that stop illegal immigration?

Cameron said people were "desperately worried" and they would "find it frankly weird" that Brown still wanted to go ahead with plans for a national ID card scheme and register.

Some Labour MPs urged Brown to put plans for an ID card scheme on hold while the government absorbed the lessons from the loss of the child benefit data.

Karen Buck, a member of the Commons home affairs committee, said: "The worst thing in the world would be to plough on and say, 'We're going ahead with this', until we have had a chance for proper reflection and measure where public opinion stands when this has calmed down."

Andy Love, a member of the treasury committee, said: "It is sensible in the circumstances to stand back for a while."

I fins myself agreeing with Cameron. I "find it frankly weird" that Brown's government are considering pushing on with the ID card scheme - at a time when they have just lost the data of over 25 million Brits - without ever winning the argument over why such cards are needed in the first place.

At the moment they appear on the threshold of conceding that less information should be held on such cards, but they have still to prove to most of us why such cards will be needed and what the gains to all of us of such cards would be.

Until they do that, the ID card should be opposed.

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Tags: Brown, ID cards, war on terror, loss of data