The Adam Smith Institute
The Adam Smith Institute is the UK's leading innovator of free-market policies. Named after the great Scottish economist and author of The Wealth of Nations, its guiding principles are free markets and a free society. It researches practical ways to inject choice and competition into public services, extend personal freedom, reduce taxes, prune back regulation, and cut government waste.

The Institute is politically independent and non-profit. It works through research on policy options, publications, conferences and seminars, and helping to shape public debate in the media and among opinion-formers.

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Howard dumps support for ID cards
By Alex Singleton

Michael Howard, the leader of the UK's Conservative Party, has withdrawn his party's support for identity cards. According to ePolitix:

[The Conservative Party] insisted it still backed the scheme in principle, even though it was not voting in favour of it during third reading in the Commons.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said ministers had failed to answer "serious questions about practical issues to make this ID system work".

"They have not even answered the questions of the all party joint committee on human rights who described their failure to respond as 'deeply unsatisfactory'.

The cards have come under considerable criticism from the more libertarian members of the Conservative Party, including Peter Lilley, a prominent former Secretary of State. When the House of Commons voted on a previous reading of the bill, Bill Cash, a prominent Tory, brandished a copy of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and said ID cards would bring a "sea change" in the relationship between state and citizens. 70 Conservative MPs were absent or voted against the bill. Campaign group no2id says 41 of those have gone on record to express their hostility toward ID cards.



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Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Adam Smith was the great Scottish philosopher and economist best known for "The Wealth of Nations", his pioneering book on free trade and market economics.

A wide selection of material about Adam Smith is now available on the Adam Smith website. This includes the full text of his two major works, The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.