AC Grayling, author of In Freedom’s Name: the Case Against Identity Cards, (published by Liberty) has an article in the Times this morning spelling out some of the problems with ID cards. Extract:
"Forged cards might not fool forensic experts, but in most cases they will not be recognised by bank clerks and shop assistants, so their effect on fraud will be minor.
ID cards might help to catch illegal immigrants if it becomes necessary to produce a card in order to get, say, hospital treatment (an idea strongly opposed by the BMA), but they will not deter illegals from anything other than seeking services for which a card is needed. To put the entire population to the necessity of paying for an ID card in order to catch a small number of illegal immigrants is like killing flies with bombs."
If you think Mr Grayling is just one of those extremists from the "civil rights industry," as I heard it described on the radio over the weekend, how about this:
"Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right demand, let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local communities."
Another civil rights industrialist? No. That was Tony Blair speaking to a Labour party conference, ten years ago, beofre he became prime minister.
For me it simply makes no sense to spend billions of pounds of public money on technology which will not work.
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