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Written by Alex Williams
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Sunday, 11 November 2007 |
"Never has so much been paid by so many for so little"
That should be the government's clarion call as they plough ahead with their preposterous ID card scheme. Latest government cost estimates put the scheme's cost at a burgeoning £5.6bn. Given the inauspicious history of government IT projects, that is undoubtedly a very conservative estimate. And it remains to be shown exactly how it will impact the risk of terrorism in the slightest.
Rather than concentrating on basic issues that could easily deliver a safer nation – such controlling the UK's borders so the security services know who is coming in and who is going out – the government seemingly prefers to opt for snazzy new schemes like ID cards, regardless of whether they will do any good. In an era of style over substance, the eye-catching initiative is king.
As time progresses, the economic price of this approach to government is becoming apparent, but no cost prediction can warn of the risks to our civil liberties. Britain is of its civil libertarian history, with a tradition of common law and negative rights. Thus when Liam Byrne declared this week that "ID cards will become a part of the fabric of British society" he demonstrated the government's essential problem – it just doesn't understand what makes Britain tick. The notion of a land in which a policeman can at any point stop and ask us for 'our papers', where our activities are recorded on a central database and where our every move is tracked, is as alien to the British social fabric as is possible.
As the costs – both concrete and innumerable – of this scheme become more and more apparent, one can only pray that this white elephant is put to sleep before it is too late.
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