Expensive
Introducing Labour's mandatory ID card scheme is likely to cost every taxpayer at least £200. And then we will each be charged over £90 to obtain one of the new combined ID cards and passports. All that is based on current estimates of the cost – but we all know what happens to the costs of big Government schemes! [Sign our petition against ID cards now]
Intrusive
Human rights campaigners Liberty say:
Despite not appearing to be compulsory, the Secretary of State can require some types of people to register, by 'proscribing' a group. This is likely to apply to foreign nationals at first but will eventually apply to the entire population.
[Sign our petition against ID cards now]
Ineffective
Spain's ID cards did not prevent the Madrid atrocities. Stella Rimington, the ex-head of MI5, says "I don't think that anybody in the intelligence services ... would be pressing for ID cards". Also, relying on one form of ID may well make problems worse - both America and Australia have far worse problems of identity theft than the UK because both of them rely on a single, widely used, identity number.
ID cards are expensive, intrusive, and ineffective. I call on the Government
to abandon its plans for a national ID database, and to invest the
money it would have spent on the scheme on 10,000 extra police.