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Tories join ID card opponents

Tags:
David Davies,
Privacy International,
ID Cards

Kable

Published: 20 May 2004 12:10 BST

The public services should offer "serious protection" of every individual's privacy, the shadow home secretary said on 19 May, 2004.

Taking part in a public meeting on the proposed national ID card held at the London School of Economics, David Davies called for a much more disciplined approach to government databases. He said the notion that information given to one department stayed with one department had been eroded without people's knowledge and without legislation.

"That's very, very dangerous," he said.

Privacy International, the organiser of the meeting, published research by YouGov which said that one million people would go to jail rather than carry an ID card, three million were prepared to break the law, and five million would demonstrate. It announced formation of the No2id coalition to stop ID cards, supported by the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party.

The government, Home Office and police all declined to attend, effectively making the event a rally for the case against ID cards.

The Lib. Dem. peer Lord Phillips of Sudbury said a decent society needed to win people's hearts and minds, and ensure that the marginalised did not become too desperate. He could not see that the move to an increasingly technical and mechanised approach to policing was remotely likely to be a success.

The Home Office's capability on major IT projects was called into question by several speakers. David Cameron MP added that when officials came with technology to present their case to the Home Affairs Select Committee it didn't work.

Peter Smith, president of the Law Society representing 116,000 lawyers, said the government had yet to make a clear rationale for the ID cards and register, and was making "disingenuous use of the word voluntary". Having to register for an ID card would mark a distinct shift in the balance between the rights of the individual and the power of the state, he said.