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Identity Cards Bill

It is worth my placing our objections to the amendments in the context of the Bill as a whole. The Bill has raised some of the most fundamental issues of principle imaginable. The introduction of identity cards will usher in one of the most far-reaching changes in British public life in recent times. It will change, unalterably, the relationship between the individual and the state by massively increasing the quantity and scope of information held centrally by the Government on each and every British citizen. It will revolutionise the capacity of the state to monitor the movements and behaviour of each and every one of us. It erodes privacy, and in extremis it will curtail freedom—and, to boot, it comes at a cost. Even after all the debates that we have had, we still do not know the true financial cost of the Bill. The latest independent financial assessment from the London School of Economics estimates that the Government will run up a whopping deficit of £1.8 billion in the first 10 years of its operation. We still do not know who will run it. We still do not know how the database will be organised, and the Government’s lamentable record in running large IT projects raises serious questions over whether it will ever be run successfully at all. It is a monstrous expression of big, big government.