Thurrock Labour MP urged to abandon support for crazy ID cards plan

1.23.01am GMT Mon 28th Jan 2008

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

Following the revelation that the personal details of 25 million parents and children have been lost by the Government's Revenue and Customs department (HMRC) and the recent increase in identity theft, makes this prospect more alarming.

Thurrock Liberal Democrat Vice Chairman Earnshaw Palmer has written to Andrew MacKinley MP urging him to withdraw his support for the ID cards scheme and a National Identity Register in which the Government wants 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 slipshod in the way that same information is kept," said Earnshaw Palmer.

"This whole saga of incompetence has been shocking and families in Thurrock are now rightly asking whether their personal details are safe."

"The National Identity Register, which the Government is 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 the anger and anxiety of all concerned, and now abandon its Identity Card scheme. It is clear that the Government cannot be trusted to manage effectively mass databases of personal information.

"Andrew MacKinley voted for Identity Cards when the scheme went through Parliament despite some Labour MPs taking a principled stand and joining the Liberal Democrats in voting against the Government's big brother plans.

"But a debacle on this scale must surely give him cause to think again. I have written to him calling on him to press the Government to end the Identity Card scheme for good and to ensure that we do not risk a personal data disaster on an even more catastrophic scale."