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A Comment on my deconstruction of Professor Hazels report on The English Question suggests that there is no linkage between the devolution and EU Regionalisation.

I must agree that this is a much argued contention by those who oddly are recipients of EU largess, who œincidentally also support and promote the devolution process, including the break up of England into 9 separate political regions.

Basically The English Question is to address the problems left by Tony Blair`s unfinished destruction of Britain as a political unit. From Hazell`s point of view there is only one answer to The English Question, and that is to destroy England, that without doubt would be one way of addressing the problems but as Hazell makes clear;

“Regionalism Is Not a Complete Answer Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have powers to make laws in their devolved assemblies and substantial executive powers over major public services such as health, education, and local government. English regional assemblies would have had no lawmaking power and no executive powers to speak of.”

However back to the suggestion that the EU is not relevant to the devolution process, we do not have to search far to find overwhelming evidence in official and academic reports, that give the lie to this suggestion.

Regions in the European Union
By Michael Keating *

“European integration has been a powerful stimulus to territorial mobilisation in Western Europe, but at the same time it has provided new mechanisms to manage the consequences. The erosion of state sovereignty and the sharing of power that it imposes allow a more flexible constitutional order in which questions of jurisdiction do not become absolutes but can be negotiated. In multinational states like Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom, this has permitted a programme of decentralisation and a degree of recognition of the special needs of particular areas, within the overall framework of Europe.”

Martin Burch, Ricardo Gomez, Simon Bulmer (University of Manchester),
Patricia Hogwood (University of Glasgow), Caitriona Carter and Andrew
Scott (University of Edinburgh)
The English Regions and the European Union

Paper No. 2
Devolution and European Union Policy Making Series
May 14, 2003

“Sub-national involvement in EU policies and politics is an established feature of the
European integration process. Over the course of several decades, interaction between
different levels of government within and beyond the nation state has become a defining characteristic of the EU.”

But in what way has the EU influenced and driven the policy of devolution?

Firstly we must define “the EU effect”. That is change that would not have happened or would not have happened in the way it has, if it were not for the existence of the EU or arrangements and interaction resulting from the creation and growth of the EU.

How has the EU exerted its influence on these developments; for an official answer to that question we need only turn to the Final Report to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) December 2003

“The Structural Funds are the primary instrument for implementing EU regional policy across the Member States. They were initially designed and have subsequently evolved to reflect key EU policy priorities,
The Structural Funds have a specific remit to complement Member State regional
development policies but there are differences in emphasis and some scope for
European monies to influence national spending priorities:

The European Commission’s role as a partner in the implementation of the
Structural Funds means that its perspective on the barriers to development in a
particular programme area, and the necessary solutions, can influence the nature
of strategies that are adopted.”

So the answer to the question is money or the availability of funding directly from the EU (of course this is our money in the first place, which the EU then returns to us with strings attached in order to facilitate EU objectives,)

This is not quite the end of the matter however as the report continues;

“The requirement to use domestic funding sources to match-fund or co-finance
Structural Fund programmes, and the desire on the part of regional and other
actors to maximise the ‘draw-down’ from the Structural Funds, has the potential to
influence how domestic funding streams are deployed.”

So not only does EU funding influence regional policy it influence our own government spending.

Michael Keating
“The European Commission considers that the ability of the Structural Funds to influence policy development in Member States to reflect EU policy goals and to act as stimulus for increased integration of policy across the EU is one of the principal areas where community added value can be identified.”

Back to the The English Regions and the European Union, paper and a question of relative meanings:

The Emergence of “New English Regionalism”: 1991-97
“Prior to 1997, regional involvement in European Union policy making was very much a
‘bottom up’ development. In some regions key actors began to organise themselves to
respond to the challenges of economic regeneration and in particular to the opportunities presented by European funding programmes.”

The writers are claiming here that there was a bottom up movement for devolution, but say that it was driven “in particular by the European funding programmes”. Which they seem to have missed was a top down movement and therefore the driver for the later bottom up movement.

Back to Keating, who says:

“The whole policy was to be guided by the principle of subsidiarity, with the greatest possible involvement of regional and local interests and the social partners in the world of business, labour and voluntary groups. The Commission, in line with contemporary thinking on development policy, also sought to move from infrastructure to human capital, productive investment and endogenous development, giving opportunities for a more active and participatory role for regional actors of various sorts.

This should have encouraged greater regional involvement in policy making and stronger direct links between the Commission and regional interests, and to some extent this has happened. States without regional structures have had to create them, or a least some substitute for them, in order to be eligible for funds—for example in Greece, Ireland and Sweden. The new funds have stimulated a great deal of political mobilisation (Hooghe 1996) even in places like England, without a developed regionalism (Burch and Holliday 1993). There has been an explosion of regional lobbying and offices in Brussels. Regional actors have been brought into contact with Commission officials and its thinking on development policy has been diffused through the mechanism of partnership”

So we can see it was the EU decision to only offer funding to regions and not to nation states, which drove the devolution process from the very beginning, in order for the regions to receive funding there had to be a political mechanism in place, first to apply for and then to distribute funding.

This fact is confirmed in the paper The English Regions and the European Union,

it is important to acknowledge the significance of the structural funds in encouraging the emergence of sub-national governance in England.”

“Two principles introduced in the 1988 and 1993 reforms to the European Regional Development Fund – partnership and programming – highlight this point. The partnership concept, incorporated in the 1988 Framework Regulation, codified a Commission commitment to the inclusion of sub-national actors that had existed since the foundation of EU regional policy in the 1970s. It required tripartite consultation between the Commission, Member States and designated sub-national authorities in the formulation of development plans, the implementation of programmes and the monitoring and evaluation process. Power to designate and to take key decisions about the programmes rested with central governments. But the partnership principle clearly encouraged sub-national participation and assisted the creation of new, regionally focused, policy communities (Bache 1998: 103). The programming concept complemented partnership by setting out a procedural map for the negotiation of multi-annual plans and there were, in particular, two aspects of this which encouraged the emergence of regional players and structures. Firstly, implementing authorities had to be consulted by the Commission and member
governments during this complex and lengthy process. Secondly, the 5-year time frame of the plans ensured continuity and stability for the participants in the funding process. The series of reforms to the ERDF between 1988 and 1993 thus provided one of the significant drivers for regional engagement, albeit with varying outcomes across the English regions partly depending on the scale of the funds allocated.”

Elsewhere in the report;

“Regional differences in receipts of Structural Funds have clearly been a factor in accounting for the way organisational structures have developed.”

And

Conclusion
There was considerable variation in the way that English regions became engaged on the European issue in the pre-1997 ‘phase’. This variation in part reflected differences in the pattern of regional emergence across the nine. A pragmatic ‘new English regionalism’emerged in some areas. This emphasised economic concerns, was confined to core elites and reflected the specific characteristics of each region. It developed in tandem with the creation of integrated Government Offices in the regions. However, the timing, scope and impact of change in English regional governance was significantly driven by the Structural Funds and thus by the European Union.

Much of the substantive change over the period originated at the regulative level
with the new obligations imposed on central government and regional authorities by the Structural Funds regulations of 1988 and 1993. Important changes in processes and
organisations within the regions were a direct result of ERDF decision-making
requirements. The programming concept helped to both develop and consolidate the
regional tier by creating a clear focus for the activities of regional players. Formal requirements to operate on the basis of partnership also exerted a powerful regionalising effect by forcing those actors involved in delivering Structural Funds programmes to devise new ways of working with sub-national interests.

This I think and hope puts an end to the suggestion that the EU has nothing to do with the devolution process or the break up of England into 9 separate political regions, it is patently was and still is an EU driven movement towards an EU of the regions. Which in its most radical understanding, implies the dissolution of the nation-state as most of the central government functions are started to be carried out by the EU and regional and local authorities.

How I woke up to a nightmare plot to steal centuries of law and liberty

From the Times
By
Daniel Finkelstein

THE POINT IS, I don’t want to seem like a nutter. It’s a very common human emotion, that — not wanting to stand out for thinking something hardly anyone else thinks. Best keep your head down and say nothing. In 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana, more than 900 people voluntarily drank strawberry-coloured poison and died, each one following his neighbour, eager not to refuse the drink and have his neighbour think that he was a nutter. Perhaps the worst part of the tragedy is that the rest of us look back at them and think — what a bunch of nutters.
So I’m nervous about admitting that I’ve been having a paranoid nightmare, one that very few other people seem to share. But I have been, so you may as well know about it.

In my nightmare, Tony Blair finally decides that he is fed-up with putting Bills before Parliament. He has so much to do and so little time. Don’t you realise how busy he is? He’s had enough of close shaves and of having to cut short trips abroad. He decides to put a Bill to End All Bills before the Commons, one that gives him and his ministers power to introduce and amend any legislation in future without going through all those boring stages in Parliament.

That’s not the end of my feverish fantasy. The new law is proposed and hardly anyone notices. John Redwood complains, of course, and a couple of Liberal Democrats, but by and large it is ignored. The Labour rebels are nowhere to be seen. The business lobby announces that it is about time all those politicians streamlined things, cutting out time-wasting debates. In a half empty Commons chamber, a junior minister puts down any objections with a few partisan wisecracks. Then the Bill to End All Bills is nodded through the Houses of Parliament, taking with it a few hundred years of Parliamentary democracy.

I wake up, sweating.

Only one thing persuades me that I’m not cracking up. When I have my nightmares about the Bill to End All Bills, I am not dreaming about dastardly legislation that I fear a cartoon Tony Blair, with an evil cackle, will introduce in some terrible future. I am tossing and turning about a government Bill that was given its second reading in the House of Commons last week and is heading into committee.

Now I know what I am about to tell you is difficult to believe (Why isn’t this on the front pages? Where’s the big political row?) but I promise you that it is true. The extraordinary Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, currently before the House, gives ministers power to amend, repeal or replace any legislation simply by making an order and without having to bring a Bill before Parliament. The House of Lords Constitution Committee says the Bill is “of first-class constitutional significance” and fears that it could “markedly alter the respective and long standing roles of minister and Parliament in the legislative process”.

There are a few restrictions — orders can’t be used to introduce new taxes, for instance — but most of the limitations on their use are fuzzy and subjective. One of the “safeguards” in the Bill is that an order can impose a burden only “proportionate to the benefit expected to be gained”. And who gets to judge whether it is proportionate? Why, the minister of course. The early signs are not good. Having undertaken initially not to use orders for controversial laws, the Government has already started talking about abstaining from their use when the matter at hand is “highly” controversial.

Now, I am not an extreme libertarian. I don’t spend my weekends in conferences discussing the abolition of traffic lights and the privatisation of MI5. But I have to admit that the legislation being debated in the Commons this week — the new ID cards, the smoking ban, the measure on the glorification of terror — has tempted me to take up smoking and start attending lectures about Hayek organised by earnest men with pamphlets in carrier bags.

Yet the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill has made me realise that I may be missing the point — the biggest danger to civil liberties posed by these new laws is not the nature of them, but merely their quantity.

Let me explain my thinking.

The Government claims that it has no malign intention in introducing the reform to parliamentary procedures. It is just that it has such ambitious plans for deregulation — or “better regulation” as it rather suspiciously calls it — that Parliament won’t be able to cope. The previous Regulatory Reform Act, passed in 2001, was so hedged around with conditions and safeguards that it took longer to produce a regulatory reform order than it did to produce a Bill. So this time, the Government wants more sweeping powers.

During future detailed Commons consideration of the Bill, restrictions on the terms of the new orders will be resisted using the argument that business wants deregulation and government has to get on with it.

What does this argument, used often by the minister during last week’s debate, amount to? An admission that we are now passing so many new laws, so quickly, and so many of them are sloppy, that we don’t have time to debate them properly or reform them when they go wrong. Parliament is drowning in a sea of legislation. Instead of calling a halt to this, the Government is seeking a way of moving ever faster, adding yet more laws, this time with even less debate.

The problem with ID cards, smoking bans and new terror laws is not just the standard liberal one. It isn’t even that they are entirely unecessary, since you can fashion an argument for each measure. It is that we should be reforming and enforcing the laws we have, rather than adding new complicated, poorly thought through laws to the stack that already exists. The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill isn’t just a dangerous proposal. It is a flashing red light.
Our legislative activism is endangering our parliamentary democracy and we must stop before it’s too late.

Or am I a nutter?

And from the house of Commons.

David Howarth (Cambridge) (LD)Col 1094) I confine my remarks to the constitutional aspects of the Bill. This seems to me to be extraordinary legislation. It proposes changes to the legislative process that in any other country in Europe, and perhaps in the world, would require a constitutional amendment. That is one of the reasons that part 1 has to be taken on the Floor of the House.

One aspect of the Bill that seems quite disturbing is that it allows not just the addition of new crimes, with up to two years imprisonment or a level 5 fine, but it allows the Government to use the procedure to undertake structural change. Often, legislation does not regulate or add crimes, but sets up bodies and gives them powers. Among those bodies are, of course, local authorities. It strikes me that under the Bill as presently drafted, structural and functional reform of local government could be achieved without proper legislative scrutiny. Therefore, simply through using that mechanism, the balance of the constitution itself between local and central Government could be changed.

The Government will say, “Would that not be controversial?” That comes back to the point about the weakness of that test. Even the structure of the courts could be changed because they are no longer a matter of common law; they are a matter of statute. Any creature of statute, which technically includes any company, could be changed by these provisions……….

………The Minister has dealt with questions about changes to the Terrorism Bill, bringing back the 90 days detention without trial and the rights of defendants being changed. He says that, obviously, those are highly controversial, and they are, but the questions remain not just about fundamental rights, but about the structure of the constitution itself, which the Bill appears to allow to be changed.

Mr. Douglas Carswell (Harwich) (Con): (Col 1097) Part 1 enables Ministers to reform legislation or implement recommendations of the Law Commission by order. Law would, in effect, be made without reference to democratically elected parliamentarians. There would be a further extension of the power of a remote Executive and unaccountable national regulators. Merging regulators does not lead to less regulation. It was Max Weber who said as early as the 19th century that bureaucracy has an inherent tendency to expand. Bureaucracy tries to assume new powers, and to aggrandise itself. A merging of regulators could simply create new super-regulators, hungry for yet more power and more prone to regulate. I am concerned that part 1 will be a further step away from proper parliamentary scrutiny. It appears to empower the Executive, but in reality it will empower senior civil servants and those bureaucrats and regulators already beyond meaningful parliamentary accountability.

In the past 30 years, we have seen a steady erosion of representative parliamentary government. Behind the fac”ade of a functioning parliamentary democracy is an increasingly post-representative system of government. In almost every sphere—financial service regulation, food standards, environmental protection—it is remote quangos, not parliamentarians, that increasingly call the shots. Remote elites make the decisions; local people take the rap; no one is accountable; no one gets sacked: this is how we are governed today. I fear that this Bill is not so much anti-regulation as anti-democratic.

Speaking as someone who could be characterised as slightly sceptical about the European project, part 3 of the Bill leaves me somewhat suspicious. Not for the first time, measures are being introduced in the name of streamlining, but I fear that they may turn out to be a power-grab. European law is currently introduced into this country through regulation. This Bill could enable Brussels diktats to be brought in through schemes and rules. What does that mean? Yesterday in this House, one Member spoke about the European Union achieving the so-called Lisbon agenda. Remember that? It was about deregulating in order to make Europe competitive. Reference was made at the time to making Europe the most competitive economy in the world. That may seem absurd now. Easing EU institutions’ ability to make our laws for us will only exacerbate the Euro-sclerosis afflicting that tired old continent. Easing such ability will only tie us closer to those worn-out EU economies; it will only place us more firmly in Europe’s economic sarcophagus.

I welcome the Regulatory Reform Committee’s acknowledgement that, far from being about deregulation and tidying up, this Bill
“has the potential to be the most constitutionally significant Bill that has been brought before Parliament for some years.”

I welcome the recognition that the driving force behind it is the Cabinet Office and, perhaps, senior civil servants. It could become a bureaucrats’ charter: it could allow them to avoid the messy and unpredictable business of having their measures scrutinised by the people’s elected representatives. Yes, Minister, this Bill could be Sir Humphrey’s dream come true. The Minister would be able to amend, repeal and replace primary and secondary legislation without reference to this House.

It was Walter Bagehot who said in the 19th century that the Crown had ceased to be part of what he called the efficient part of the constitution and had become the dignified part. By that, he meant that it had the trappings of power, but not the reality. My fear is that although this democratically elected Parliament has the trappings of power here in our ornate Chamber, real power is increasingly moving elsewhere. This Bill will only exacerbate that process.

Mr Djanolgy: (Col 1100). The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome said that part 1 is unacceptable as it stands, and we agree.

Part 3 of the Bill relates to legislation emanating from the EU. We have said that we support the idea of making it easier for UK institutions to deal with EU legislation, but—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham and my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich asked—how will that actually work? As my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire asked, what are the rules and schemes for EU law referred to in the Bill? We need to know.

The Bill has a striking resemblance to parts of other Bills before this House and the other place. Those need to be looked at in context to highlight the growing constitutional trend away from primary legislation. The Company Law Reform Bill and the Government of Wales Bill both include a similar means of introducing orders through forms of delegated legislation

From the letters page in the Times some voices of concern.

This ID card infringes fundamental freedoms

Sir, Most unusually, you have allowed yourself to be misled by the Government’s spin and misrepresentations concerning the ID Card Bill — principally by swallowing its contention that the privacy concerns of many people in the UK are “in contemporary, card-carrying Britain, entirely irrelevant”. (leading article, Feb 13, and letter, Feb 14).

Those concerns are not in relation to the simple carrying of a card, which is merely the physical expression of the system the Government proposes to impose upon us. My deep anxiety, shared by many others, is the national identity register (NIR) — the database behind the cards — which has been too little debated and which appears to be widely misunderstood.

Leave aside for the moment the questions of overall cost, of the level of charge to be paid by the citizen, of the reliability of the biometric technology to be used, of the burden placed on those whose iris or facial scans do not readily “fit” (such as people with some disabilities and from certain ethnic groups) or of the Government’s abysmal record in implementing any project involving computer technology on time and within budget.

My principal objection is that the Government cannot make up its mind what the ID card and NIR are supposed to accomplish and cannot produce convincing evidence that any of its aims will be achieved by the scheme as outlined in the Bill. We have been told at various times that ID cards and the NIR will help to reduce benefit fraud, cut illegal immigration, combat identity theft, become a vital tool in the war on terror or be a major aid to the police in fighting crime. Yet each of these supposed benefits has been challenged, often by those best able to judge.

I remain deeply sceptical that ID cards and the NIR will achieve any of their stated aims. Against this, I balance the fundamental shift in the relationship between individual and State, the scope for error and maladministration, the horrendous costs of setting up and running the scheme and have come to the inescapable conclusion that the whole concept is flawed and must be resisted by every legal means.
JON MILES
Newton Abbot, Devon

Sir, I feel that I am sensible enough to look after my own identity and take necessary measures to that effect, which is my responsibility.
Now I am being forced to put my identity, along with various measurements of parts of my body, on to a national database where I have little control over the access, use or security of my identity.
MATTHEW HALL
Newcastle upon Tyne

Sir, The decision taken by members of parliament shows them to be as unworthy as representatives of the people as were their predecessors whom Cromwell was compelled to remove in the 17th century.

Is it not obvious that the growing certainty of compulsory ID cards and its associated database, together with the surveillance state represented by more CCTV cameras than are used by Communist China, has placed us well down the road to the nightmare world of 1984? Who can doubt that the distortion of language embodied in political correctness is a precursor to the imposition of a form of Newspeak.

It beggars belief that the British people, at the behest of the lobby fodder within the Commons, are to be forced to submit their fingerprints and iris patterns for inclusion in a state-run archive and to become accountable to those who for so many centuries have been accountable to us.

What foreign dictators have failed to do we are now doing to ourselves.
COLIN BULLEN
Tonbridge, Kent

Sir, It was William Pitt the Younger who said: “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

What Britons never, never shall be, they have become. A fundamental freedom was lost when compulsory ID cards were voted for.
DÓNAL THOMPSON
Madrid

Slaves we are certainly becoming, this Statewatch report shows that at an EU level this is being driven by the British government, directly from Tony Blair`s sofa cabinet. Even the EUites are concerned about “the legal bases for such action”
According to Statewatch

“At the end of January the Commission published its 128-page work programme for 200
6: European Commission work programme for 2006: Justice and home affairs issues. Hidden in the detail is the following:

“Adoption par la Commission d’une décision établissant des normes pour les éléments de sécurité à intégrer dans les cartes d’identité (Comité Article 6)”

That is to adopt a Commission Decision to establish standards for security in ID cards. The “Brief description” attached is more explicit:

“Brief Description: According to The Hague Action Plan, travel documents both for third country nationals and EU citizens should be better secured in particular via the integration of biometric identifiers. Also Identity Cards have been explicitly mentioned even if there are doubts about the legal bases for such an action. This proposal responds to this request and will harmonise the security features for ID cards issued by Member States” (emphasis added)

There is, of course, a big difference between simply “harmonising” security features in national ID cards and “the integration of biometric identifiers” (see, below for objections to this approach).

Two other aspects are extraordinary about this proposal. First, the open admission that there are doubts about: “the legal bases for such action”. Not surprising as Article 18.3 TEC (Nice) expressly excludes provisions on national ID cards.

Second, because the Commission does not appear to be intending to draft a proposal for consideration by the Council and European Parliament but rather to take this momentous decision in secret committee - the Article 6 Committee, referred to as a “Technical Committee”.

The Commission’s intention is all the more surprising as exactly this issue was the subject of heated discussion in the Council prior to the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 1 December 2005.

“The story starts back in July when the UK Presidency presented a Note on “Minimum common standards for national identity cards” to SCIFA (Strategic Committee on Immigration, Frontiers and Asylum) (EU doc no: 11092/05). The Note called on SCIFA to ask the Article 6 Committee to draft standards including the “use of biometrics”. This “Article 6 Committee” is a technical committee set up by the Commission to work out the implementation of the uniform visa format in 1995 - but what powers are there to extend the Committee’s remit first to residence permits for third country nationals, then to EU passports and now to EU ID cards? As the original purpose of the Committee was to deal with the uniform visa format, on the the European Parliament was only “consulted”, it appears the parliament has no right to see what is happening on all the other issues too. See: EU: Biometrics - from visas to passports to ID cards.

The proposal surfaced again in November 2005 when the UK Presidency sent another Note to SCIFA on 11 November (EU doc no: 14351/05). The Article 6 Committee had “considered” physical security features and produced “interim conclusions” and in parallel “an ad-hoc group of experts from Member States” produced its “conclusions”. SCIFA was “invited” to agree “Conclusions” with a view to their adoption “in the margins” (as an A Point - adopted without discussion) at the Justice and Home Affairs Council (JHA Council) on 1 December 2005.

The opening Recitals in the Conclusions plainly show the lack of a legal basis. No legally binding standards or timetables could be “imposed” on member states - “Conclusions” are anyway “soft”, non-binding law which have to be agreed unanimously. This is followed by “without prejudging the issue of the possible legal basis” to “harmonise” security standards for national identity cards - in plain language this means that there is no legal basis but if common standards including biometrics are adopted by member states one-by-one (independently as it were) then “harmonisation” can follow later (a common tactic for controversial measures).

The Conclusions contained two elements, first, standards related to the “issuing process” (eg: applicants should appear in person, security of data and storage). Second, the introduction of biometrics identifiers (”face and two fingerprints”) incorporated into a radio frequency chip (RFID) which should follow the specifications for passports “without modification” - this proved to be controversial. Also by the back-door the Conclusions set standards for checking applicants data “against existing databases” for example, “civil registers, passport and identity cards databases or driving licence registers”.

A week later (18 November) a Note (EU doc no: 14622/05) from the UK Presidency to COREPER (the permanent committee based in Brussels of high-level officials from the 25 governments) said SCIFA “had reached agreement on most of the issues” and it was invited to:

“examine the only outstanding issue, which concerns a reservation by Belgium”

The final version, dated 25 November 2005 (EU doc no: 15000/05), had highly significant changes concerning biometrics. Member states could choose whether they wanted to have biometrics on national ID cards and the passport biometric standards were now only a “reference point” or “starting point”. All references to fingerprints and RFID chips were deleted.

“Belgium and the Czech Republic consider that the introduction of biometric data into national identity cards cannot be examined only from the technical angle. The question requires a wide-ranging debate, which includes the protection of the private life [privacy], budgetary and organisational aspects”

It is interesting to note that while the Conclusions were published in the official press release of the JHA Council on 1 December the statement by Belgium and the Czech Republic was not JHA press release, 1 December 2005.

Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments:

“This is no way to try to bring in such a far-reaching policy, one which will affect millions of people. It is particularly objectionable that the Commission appears to be proposing that the introduction of biometrics on national ID cards should be considered as a “technical” issue by a committee whose actions cannot be scrutinised. By-passing national and European parliamentary scrutiny, let alone civil society, has no place in a democracy”

In our own parliament the real culprits for the decimation of our constitution, have been debating ID Cards again before the vote later this week.

First, on the so called voluntary introduction of the system; is seems that the government proposes to initially allow a “voluntary” take up of the cards, at some point to be determined later, it is proposed to bring in compulsion. The idea being that if enough of the people prove to be open to the system by taking out the cards on a voluntary basis then the government would make it compulsory.

In fact in the Labour manifesto states “We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports.”

The problem is that the government want to make it a condition that you must take the ID Card when you apply for a new or to renew your passport. This clause was removed by the House of Lords but has been put back into the bill by the government.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury put the matter nicely when he moved the amendment in the Lords. He stated:
“We seek to replace compulsion by voluntarism. Citizens should not be forced to have ID cards. Compulsion is far too often resorted to by the modern state. That comes from an intensely managerial culture in which regulation rules. That sits uneasily with fundamental rights such as privacy and voluntarism. This Bill is an authentic clash between such rights and managerial efficiency.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 23 January 2006; Vol. 677, c. 957.]

Baroness Scotland, speaking on behalf of the Government, tried to claim that passports are voluntary. Well they are but by the government linking the card scheme to passports means that to avoid being compelled to take an ID card you become a prisoner in this country with no opportunity to travel on business or for pleasure. Also as over 80% of us do carry a passport the governments chosen trigger for compulsion would soon be reached.

David Davis made points about the national register;

There are many good reasons for not wanting to be on the national identity register, which involves a large number of pieces of data about each individual being put on a single Government database, many of them the access keys for other Government databases. That is the important point: it is a central database with access keys effectively to all the other Government databases.

It is disingenuous of the Home Secretary to say, “We’ve already got all those.” One of the transitions that has taken place over the past several years under the Government, and to a small extent under the previous Government too, is the removal of barriers to the transfer of information around Government. Those barriers were a protection of the liberties of the individual, and now they have gone. Many have gone for good reason—to make the Child Support Agency work, to stop terrorism, and so on—and the Bill will accelerate that process.

Finally, there is the most important question about the whole issue—the insecurity of the system. The Government have made, in a way properly, much of the issue of identity theft, particularly with regard to terrorism. Yet their proposal—a point I referred to earlier—is to gather the access keys to virtually every Government database in the national identity register, put them on one large computer and then create many thousands of direct access points to that computer. They will have created the most attractive possible target for every fraudster, terrorist, confidence trickster and hacker on the planet. Those people will be able to lift data out and put viruses and false data in.

If the Pentagon and Microsoft cannot keep hackers from penetrating their mainframes, what chance the Home Office? Speaking about the scheme, Microsoft’s national technology officer has said that a central identity database could worsen the very problems that it was intended to prevent, such as terrorism and identity theft. He said that

“ministers should not be building systems that allow hackers to mine information so easily.”

So, far from protecting the public, the Government will put the individual citizen at risk by creating a culture of complacency that is based on an ill-designed and ill-thought-out scheme.

Incidentally, this is yet another area where the Government mounted a mendacious attack on the independent LSE report. I will deal with that in detail because it is rather important. The section of the report that highlights the very serious security flaws in the proposed system was written not by an antagonist of the identity card system, but by somebody who favours identity cards, Dr. Brian Gladman, the ex-technical director of NATO, who had an eminent career in the British military ensuring the security of our military computer systems. He himself has said:

“the UK ID cards programme as now envisaged will create safety and security risks for those whose details are entered into the system.”—

that from an avowed supporter of ID cards.