immediate release

Gordon Brown in a speech to Chatham House today appeared to back Home Office plans for government-wide and commercial access to personal information on the back of ID cards. A report to parliament yesterday on the costs of the scheme revealed next to nothing new about costs, but did contain outlines of the government’s ambitions for “a new national identity management scheme”.[1] Civil liberty campaign NO2ID [2] says that Brown expects the public to believe two contradictory
ideas at the same time – the definition of ‘doublethink’ in 1984 – twice over: about the potential cost-effectiveness of the scheme AND the safety of personal data in government hands.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator said:
This is classic doublethink: In fact it is double-doublethink. Mr Brown appeals to fear, saying this is a security measure with “safeguards” for privacy, but at the same time he is studying how to let thousands of public bodies swap information about you, and share (or sell) the information with the private sector too [3] – which is a
spy’s and fraudster’s charter. The government claims the scheme will make our lives easier and it more efficient, while creating a vast new bureaucratic tangle for us to answer to.

And the appeal to fear – of terrorists, of foreign immigrants, of criminals – is all there is. There are no explanations how it is supposed to work; no answer to the charge that nationalising identity creates new dangers. Pointing to trivial ’savings’ [4] and discredited announcements [5], while giving no realistic assessment of the costs and risks of the scheme itself, doesn’t cut it. Has the Treasury finally done the sums, then? The Home Office hasn’t. [6]

The scheme won’t do anything useful at all about the problems they are trying to scare us with. But ministers hope that if they repeat this impossible nonsense often enough the people will believe it.

-ENDS-

Notes for editors:

1. Identity Cards Act 2006 – First section 37 report to parliament about the likely costs of the ID cards scheme 9th October 2006. 1 page out of the 9 with any content is devoted to prospective estimates, and it gives only headline totals. The rest is not a costs report but a policy justification. Section 1.2(5) on “Transforming services” is particularly relevant.

2. NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net

3.See, e.g., “Chancellor appoints Sir James Crosby to lead Public Private Forum on Identity” eGov Monitor, 12th July 2006
http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/6708/

4. E.g. £50 million of social security fraud guessed by the DWP, an estimated £20 million of NHS services to foreigners unrecovered, £200 million once a decade on the census. No figures have been offered for the costs of using the ID scheme for any of these prospective applications.

5. The Section 37 ‘Dobson’ report quotes a figure of £1.7 billion a year for “identity fraud” that was widely derided when it appeared.
See for example: Silicon.com, 2 Feb 2006, “Government ID fraud claims are they all they seem?”
http://www.silicon.com/publicsector/0,3800010403,39156140,00.htm

6. The Dobson report states: “The cost estimate excludes [...] Costs falling to other organisations [i.e. outside the IPS, even within the Home Office] using ID cards to verify identities.” It is implicit that no account has been taken of the costs to other organisations of using, or integrating their systems with the identity management
database, which would be required for any of the functions suggested for it.

NO2ID [1] called a speech by immigration minister Liam Byrne [2] a diversion from the real questions and the secrecy that surrounds the
“identity cards” scheme.  The speech takes place to coincide with the first six-monthly Home Office report to parliament [3] about cost projections for the scheme.

Phil Booth, NO2ID’s National Coordinator said:

The Government is trying, again, to blind us with its magic technology. By highlighting immigration, ministers want to distract the public from the fact that their ID scheme will inconvenience millions of law-abiding citizens far more than those people who are already trying to keep a low profile. Biometrics are irrelevant to catching illegal immigrants.

These ‘new’ figures [4] amount to little more than the number of foreign prisoners the Home Office lost last year, and even then only those that presented themselves for checking­ – a tiny fraction of ordinary cross-border traffic.

If trials finished last November, why announce them now? Because the government needs a distraction from their failure to keep the scheme on track [5], such as only publishing the few civil service studies that
give the project some credibility, and keeping the rest secret from Parliament and the public [6].

We can be confident the ‘Dobson report’ won’t answer any of the hard
questions that have been asked by experts. Going on past form we can
expect a six-monthly repetition of this charade for the indefinite future.

-ENDS-
Notes for editors:
1. NO2ID is the non-partisan national campaign against ID cards and the database state. See http://www.no2id.net
2. Preview released to the Sunday Telegraph today, 8 October 2006, see

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/08/nidcards08.xml

3. The so-called ‘Dobson Report’ required under an amendment to the Identity Cards Act 2006 moved by former cabinet minister Frank Dobson to head off backbench concerns about costs. The report is only required to covers future estimates for Home Office spending, not the actual costs of the whole scheme, and the Home Secretary is permitted to censor any information that he deems commercially sensitive.

4. The Telegraph piece reported:
Mr Byrne will announce the findings from research that began in Sri Lanka in 2003 and was extended to cover 12 “visa-issuing points” in nine countries for those wishing to come to Britain. The trials, in which only biometric visas were issued, finished last November. They detected 1,400 failed asylum seekers trying to return to
Britain illegally.

5. It is unclear, for example, whether the scheme is proceeding on the original plan or according to the quick and dirty option suggested in emails leaked earlier this year:
ID cards doomed, say officials – Sunday Times, 9 July 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2262437_1,00.html

6.For example: Joan Ryan, minister for the scheme responding in July to a question from Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg about the programme’s vulnerability to fraud, said:
“I hope to be able to publish our findings shortly and they will give him [Clegg] the reassurance that he requires, as well as reveal the widespread public support for the ID card system.”
Nothing convincing has been published.
None of the Office of Government Commerce gateway reviews for the
project has been published, even in summary.
The DWP has conducted a study into the risks and benefits of ID cards in the department. Mark Oaten MP requested this be published in 2004, and even though the Information Commissioner determined in June 2006 that the public interest in publishing it outweighs any commercial considerations, we are still waiting.
See: ‘Government Computing’ 9 June 2006:

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/4BEF5D24F85196EE8025718800511D1E?OpenDocument

7. For example, the House of Commons Science and Technology committee cannot get answers to its questions:
“In order to clarify when and how the card might be used, we recommend that the Home Office releases more information regarding what personal data will be revealed in different scenarios, including in an online context. Until this information is released, it is difficult to ascertain the true scope of the scheme and to fully understand how technology will be used within the scheme.”
ID cards: Scientific Advice, Risks and Evidence, HC1032, 4 August 2006

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmsctech/1032/1032.pdf