Government must end ID card plan now

6.32.48pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 30th Nov 2007

The disaster over child benefit records shows why plans for ID cards must be scrapped.

The Government's data disaster over child benefit records shows why plans for Identity Cards must be scrapped, say the Liberal Democrats.

Many Southport residents have been shocked by the revelation that the personal details of 25 million parents and children have been lost by the Government's Revenue and Customs department (HMRC). The Liberal Democrats have urged the Prime Minister to abandon his plans for a national ID cards scheme and a National Identity Register in which the Government want to store the personal information of everyone in the country.

The fiasco at HMRC has shown the dangers of the Government holding huge amounts of information about each one of us whilst being negligent in the way that information is looked after. This whole saga of incompetence has been shocking and many people are now rightly asking whether their personal details are safe.

The National Identity Register, which the Government are setting up as part of the Identity Card scheme, will hold vastly more information on each and every one of us than Customs and Revenue managed to lose.

The possibilities for the loss of that information, either accidentally or through illegitimate means must make the Government stop and think again very seriously about their plan to store all the data they can on us on a central register.

This is a clear illustration of the real dangers of a big brother centralised state. State control of personal identity details is a real threat to our civil liberties. The Government should respond to public anger and now abandon its ID card scheme. It is clear that the Government cannot be trusted to manage effectively mass databases of personal information.

The Liberal Democrats opposed Identity Cards when the scheme went through Parliament, saying that the scheme would be expensive, misguided and insecure. This latest debacle shows just what is at risk.