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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, on the question of protecting the public, one should be seriously worried about the desire of the Government to stick their beaks into absolutely everyone’s business, for no reason other than idle curiosity. Together with that we have a series of crashingly incompetent computer systems. A report in the Times today says that the whole tax benefit computer system is simply not working. We have had reports that the Inland Revenue computer does not work and that the computers holding the records of National Health Service doctors do not work. Not only do we have a nosy Government, but one who insist on putting everything on computer and are then incapable of making those computer systems work—except at three times the cost which was originally budgeted. Even then, they are probably still not making them work. It is very depressing. The noble Baroness may laugh and smile gently at a description that might be mildly hyperbolic, but it is exactly what people out there think. There is too great a track record for it to be laughed off as crying wolf.