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ID Cards Won’t Address Crux Of Issue

Opinion
Lembit Öpik
Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire

In 1995 Tony Blair said at the Labour Party Conference: “We all suffer crime, the poorest and most vulnerable most of all, it is the duty of government to protect them.” He continued: “And instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory right demand, let that money provide thousands of extra police officers on the beat in our local communities”. I agree with him. Unfortunately, it seems that he no longer agrees with himself. Far from being opposed to identity cards, the prime minister has done a 180 per cent u-turn and now sees them as the answer to the problems of illegal immigration, international terrorism and fraud.

I do not believe that ID cards are the solution to these problems. ID cards are the product of a government that seems to think talking tough about terrorism and crime is the same as reducing terrorism and crime. Let’s look at the arguments they use.

Firstly, we are told that identity cards will give us greater security against terrorist attacks. However, terrorist attacks in recent times have been committed by people carrying photo card identification. A number of the 9/11 terrorists had valid photo card ID and in Madrid, where ID cards are compulsory, they did nothing to prevent the tragic attacks. It’s shocking to think our government can seriously believe ID cards will help to apprehend determined terrorists.

Secondly, we are told that ID cards will tackle illegal immigration. But all an immigrant needs to work illegally is an employer who’s more concerned about getting cheap labour than collecting the relevant documentation. Money would be better spent on immigration checks in the industries most affected by illegal working and on cracking down on unlicensed gang masters.

The government has also told us that ID cards will reduce benefit fraud. However, benefit fraud is not so much about pretending to be somebody else, as pretending that your circumstances are different to the reality. As with security and immigration, ID cards again fail to address the crux of the issue.

Time after time, we see the Home Office relying on popular assumptions about the security benefits of ID cards. But the problems which the ID card seeks to address are complex. They cannot be simply resolved by a plastic card.

Perhaps worst of all, identity cards mean that, instead of the state having to justify itself to you, you have to justify yourself to the state. And there’s no doubt that civil liberties will be compromised – the new scheme would eventually make it compulsory to show an ID card to access a whole range of public and private sector services, with a record kept on a central database every time the card is used. It will also mean that everyone will be obliged to provide their fingerprints to the authorities, expanding the police database to cover the entire adult population.

It’s clear that ID cards do not make us safer. They simply take us closer to a police state. And for all the reassurances of government ministers that it’s all for our own good, we should never forget that the Soviet Union was born out of the good intentions of its architects.

Instead of playing Big Brother, this government should remember that it’s here to serve the people, not to spy on us. The savings we would make by not introducing this scheme would be better spent on 10,000 more police officers across the UK.

I agree with the anti-ID card Old Blair of 1995, but not the pro-ID card New Blair of 2005. What a shame to see such change in Labour’s identity in just 10 years.

While regular columnist, Felicity Waters, is on maternity leave we will be inviting prominent campaigners to write about key social issues