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It looks like the Labour Party is about to get its way, and force ID cards down everyone’s throat, but you may be unaware of some interesting facts about this scheme.

The man we can call the father of the ID card is Michael Howard. That’s right - it’s good old Dracula, the former leader of the Conservative Party. He devised every part of this scheme when he was Home Secretary in 1996, except the biometric bit.

The reason why the Conservatives haven’t opposed ID cards or said they will get rid of them if they are returned to power, is because the whole ID card scheme is actually their idea.

Michael Howard thought a voluntary ID card scheme wouldn’t need any legislation to be introduced. The Treasury went along with it because people choosing to carry the cards would have to pay for them out of their own pocket. The young were a primary target for ID cards, as they are easier to bully into acceptance, especially if they want to buy alcohol or rent films.

A big selling point was to allow ID card carriers easier cross-border travel within Europe, under the Schengen scheme. Meanwhile, the darker aspects of the ID card were to be glossed over.

A strangely-familiar mantra of the benefits an ID card scheme would bring was heard. It included the fight against benefit fraud. Remember the Conservatives obsession with benefit fraud? It got so bad that in the end they couldn’t utter the word “benefit” without the next word being “fraud.” The ID card would also keep foreigners out of free NHS treatment, detect illegal immigrants (another Tory obsession), include details of driving offences, and due to the demands of the police, link instantly every card carrier to the criminal records database.

It was anticipated that people wouldn’t want to carry a card linking them to a massive intrusive database about them, so ways were devised of forcing them to do so. Those choosing not to carry an ID card would have their lives made a lot more difficult than the card carriers.

The police and bureaucrats have a well-documented fascination with intrusive technology, and have come to regard it as a necessary luxury. A senior civil servant summed it up perfectly ten years ago, “ID cards will do nothing to reduce crime, but bureaucrats, busy-bodies and the police will demand their production at every opportunity.”

All the Labour Party had to do was pick the idea off the shelf, add a bit about ID cards being a magic wand to defeat identity fraud (a Labour Party obsession), terrorism and organised crime, include the biometric stuff, make it compulsory, force nearly everyone to pay for their card, then steamroller the legislation through Parliament and violà, the new improved Labour Party ID card scheme.

Who would have believed that Michael Howard dreamed the whole thing up ten years ago?

Thanks, Michael.

Plagarism Lives On In The Labour Party.

By Mr. M.Parker.
15 March 2006

www.thebusinessonline.com

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