We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Tories plan flip-flop over ID cards

Michael Howard’s Conservative Party is planning a U-turn over identity cards – but not until after the General Election. According to a senior Conservative Party MP, the plan is to support ID cards at present in order to look tough on law and order, but they will drop support on ‘practical grounds’ when public opinion edges away. Cynically, Michael Howard’s office has already drawn up plans to flip-flop in the summer.

I believe this is called ‘conviction politics’.

22 comments to Tories plan flip-flop over ID cards

  • Julian Morrison

    No, it’s called “and if you believe that, I have some seaside real-estate in Birmingham going cheap”.

    Shyeah right, they’ll back off from a settled policy. More like, they’ll “downgrade” it to something equally intrusive that doesn’t even do the original’s job.

    I’ll be voting UKIP.

  • David Wildgoose

    In other words, they have no principles.

    I was going to vote Tory in the next election, but I now intend writing “No ID Cards” on my ballot paper, thus spoiling it.

    I know of no other method that is guaranteed to send a message to political parties other than the ballot box, and all spoiled ballots must be read by viewed by either the candidate or their agent. My views will thus be made known. Q.E.D.

  • Pete_London

    What bullshit. If true, I suspect its a case of the Tory Party trying to placate Tory voters by spinning a line to prevent defections to UKIP and others. Its too late in any case; when credibility is gone, it’s gone.

  • Howard is assuming there is going to be a Tory Party after the next election. Not sure if he is right on that account.

  • noone

    Are conservative parties anywhere conservative?
    The Tories seem to have the same problem as Republicans here,the rank and file voters are conservative,but the party Establishment clearly isn’t.

    Question:what is the role of the LibDems in the political ecology of Britain,anyway?Do you really need 2 parties of the left(or perhaps I should say 3?)

  • APL

    Noone: “what is the role of the LibDems in the political ecology of Britain..”

    They are bottom feeders. On the issue of ID cards though. it must be said, they are up at the surface for fresh air.

  • v-s

    i don’t know why people are surprised/upset about the Tories backing ID cards. The Tory party has always been an alliance between free-marketeers and social conservatives. after all, howard himself proposed ID cards when he was Home Secretary in the 90s.

    Such an alliance between the two faces of the Right, i would argue, will end up allowing capital to be free [e.g. deregulation and removing capital/exchange controls] but not (necessarily) people [as most socially-liberal measures were passed under the 60s Labour gov’t].

  • V-S: No we are not surprised…

  • Paul Marks

    Mr Howard still claims that he is likely to cut taxes. It is hard to see how this fits in with his support for I.D. cards – in a Daily Telegraph article on Tuesday the cost of this scheme was estimated at about 20 billion pounds.

    In the end there is no great division between “social freedom” and “economic freedom”.

    As has often been noted, human rights are property rights – they are based on self ownership.

    A state that goes about telling people what to do will tend to pick their pockets as well.

  • Adhib

    Chin up, chaps! Perry, Step Away from the portmanteau! You’re overlooking the fact that states in general, and the British state in particular, are utterly, irremediably and unaccountably inept at implementing complicated computer systems. We should be campaigning for their ‘high-tech database thingy’ to contain the maximum amount of data conceivable – nose prints, fingerprints and bumprints, at the very least. The more transactions it’s meant to keep track of, the better. That way, after ten years and £20bn for deserving IT trainees, President Euan 1st will inherit a marginally less effective monitoring system than our present passports. I mean it. They’ll have to redefine the meaning of the word ‘crash’.

    If you don’t believe me, you really must read . Think of the inevitable meltdown as a £20bn cream pie (with lashings of custard), balanced precariously on a trestle table under which someone has carelessly left a-lying an old garden rake. Here comes your government, in a Charlie Chaplin style, full of good cheer and high hopes …
    Now smile!

  • Adhib

    Chin up, chaps! Perry, Step Away from the portmanteau! You’re overlooking the fact that states in general, and the British state in particular, are utterly, irremediably and unaccountably inept at implementing complicated computer systems. We should be campaigning for their ‘high-tech database thingy’ to contain the maximum amount of data conceivable – nose prints, fingerprints and bumprints, at the very least. The more transactions it’s meant to keep track of, the better. That way, after ten years and £20bn for deserving IT trainees, President Euan 1st will inherit a marginally less effective monitoring system than our present passports. I mean it. They’ll have to redefine the meaning of the word ‘crash’.

    If you don’t believe me, you really must read this. Think of the inevitable meltdown as a £20bn cream pie (with lashings of custard), balanced precariously on a trestle table under which someone has carelessly left a-lying an old garden rake. Here comes your government, in a Charlie Chaplin style, full of good cheer and high hopes …
    Now smile!

  • John Harrison

    Adhib
    – While it never does to underestimate the incompetence of Government in running IT projects, that will push up the cost to astronomical levels and I really don’t fancy paying even more taxes just to support this crazy scheme.
    The Tory flip flop on ID cards is almost inevitable since Julian and David
    – Michael Howard led the charge only to find half his party walked out on him and some of those who voted with him may have had their arms twisted. This is a disastrous loss of face for a party leader months before a General Election and one he won’t want to repeat in a hurry.

  • Euan Gray

    President Euan 1st will inherit a marginally less effective monitoring system than our present passports

    I seem to be gaining some notoriety around here 🙂

    Although I agree completely that the ID system will not work, since it relies on unproven technology and is too ambitious, I don’t think encouraging the buggers is the way to make it fail more quickly. This is the government which spent £456 million on the Child Support computer system which only really needs to work out 15% of someone’s income, and it still doesn’t work. It is the government whose ambitious plan to computerise the NHS record system will now cost an order of magnitude more than forecast. It will fail anyway, and will cost a fortune.

    Having said that, it seems likely that some sort of system like this is going to be necessary anyway. America, noted for its love of overly complex solutions to simple problems, is going this way by means of biometric passports, internal passports, integrated identity systems, etc., not least due to an over-reaction to 9/11. Biometric passports will be necessary for British citizens (and anyone else) to enter the USA without a visa very shortly, and although America may be the first nation to require such a thing it will almost certainly not be the last. American authorities and the several states are looking at biometric ID and associated identity databases on a rather more thorough and far-reaching level than the British government – drivers licences and passports, yes, but also such people as private visitors to prisons, welfare claimants, etc.

    Anyone thinking that this is a uniquely British thing, dreamt up by the Gramscian conspirators that infest the corridors of power, is deluding themselves. It’s something many nations are going to do, and the supposedly most free nation in the west is actually much further along the road than we are.

    All this doesn’t justify it. It will still fail by virtue of being too complex, too dependent on unreliable and/or unproven technology, and of course being implemented by the uniquely incompetent British. Then again, I don’t for a moment suppose that the British people will, en masse, complain EXCEPT about the fact they have to pay for it.

    EG

  • Guy Herbert

    EG – “on a rather more thorough and far-reaching level than the British government – drivers licences and passports, yes, but also such people as private visitors to prisons, welfare claimants, etc.

    There speaks a man who has been listening to govuk’s louder public pronouncements, and not touching the background documents. The plan–workable or not–is to track every civil transaction by encouraging the use of an unique personal id number to tag it.

    US proposals are undoubtably intrusive and likely to be implemented with bullying bureaucratic zeal, but they are also multifarious pork: more schemes, more headline uses, so less impact, even in theory, because all the approaches are free-standing and competing.

    Blair’s (that is the Civil Service’s) plan is the more thorough and far reaching: a single nationalised ID is supposed to drive out competing forms through regulatory and commercial pressure.

  • David Wildgoose says he will be spoiling his ballot paper as this will send out a message.
    The only message this sends out is that you are a wingnut. Having been an election representative I can tell you that the party officials do not care one jot about spoiled papers, the best reaction that you can hope for is that you will be laughed at or pitied as a nutter. Just like the stay-at-homes, your opinion will not matter one jot.

    The only way to send any message is to vote for a candidate that opposes ID cards.

  • Euan Gray

    The plan–workable or not–is to track every civil transaction by encouraging the use of an unique personal id number to tag it

    With respect, I think that’s a load of paranoid rubbish, on a par with the rantings of those conspiracy theorists who suppose the credit card is an invention to allow vendors to track what brands you buy. We will have to produce ID cards to buy a box of cereal at Sainsbury’s will we? And this is going to work how exactly with the numerous cash-only market stalls and what not you get all over the country?

    If by civil transactions you mean only interactions with state services, then they are already tracked, tagged and logged via your national insurance number (most commonly), your NHS number or your driver number. Frankly, I have no problem with the state verifying that the person claiming a service is entitled to it, just as I don’t complain about a corporation doing exactly the same thing.

    I do object to the ID card system, but only on the grounds that it is unnecessary, a waste of money that won’t work and won’t achieve what it says it will. Most other countries have central nationalised ID systems, and they simply DO NOT HAVE the dire implications for privacy that the more paranoid libertarian assumes the British one will. Other countries do have some degree of biometric data recording, usually fingerprints, to go along with this. AFAIK, no state currently uses iris scans for national ID purposes.

    less impact, even in theory, because all the approaches are free-standing and competing.

    I wouldn’t bet on that lasting. The US seems, plainly enough, to be moving towards compulsory nationalised identity and central databases although via different paths than in the UK. Having worked in various dictatorial crapholes around the world, as well as in civilised countries, I can only say that I have never been asked to identify myself on such a regular and consistent basis than when I was in the US earlier this year.

    I have heard, many times, all the stuff about how the determinedly independent and armed US populace would never stand for the assaults on liberty the British government is making. Well, they will stand for it, they have stood for it, and they in fact have a pretty much universal ID scheme via the SSN which is legendarily porous, open to private as well as state interests and is the enabling factor in enormous amounts of crime and fraud. No, we don’t need this kind of thing in Britain, but to pretend America doesn’t have it, won’t stand for it and/or has no intention of doing anything like it is laughable.

    I can tell you that the party officials do not care one jot about spoiled papers

    And would they still think the same way if, say, 20% of all ballots cast were spoiled?

    EG

  • John K

    I have read that as far as the US government is concerned, what they mean by a biometric passport is one with a digital photograph. The iris scans and fingerprinting which Phony Tony and Fungus want to foist on us are their own idea, but they are tagging them onto the passport as well as the slave card so they can claim that the US wants it, so we have to have it. Is this correct?

  • Guy Herbert

    EG –
    paranoid rubbish, on a par with the rantings of those conspiracy theorists who suppose the credit card is an invention to allow vendors to track what brands you buy.

    My Tesco card is definitely used for that purpose, though VISA certaily wasn’t invented for that reason. I don’t really have a problem with it. But…

    We will have to produce ID cards to buy a box of cereal at Sainsbury’s will we?

    In effect, yes, if to obtain a credit card or loyalty card we have to quote an NIR number. The regulatory impact assessment (pdf) makes it absolutely clear that the intention is to make ID cards a requirement for FSA “Know Your Customer” procedures and the application of money laundering regulations. Which latter is what I was really referring to: buy a second hand car, show your ID; buy insurance, show your ID; instruct a solicitor, hire an accountant — show your ID. It is also express ambition in the Home Office documents to require ID to buy a mobile phone.

    As for cash markets, one of the more predictable effects of a Register linking tax references to other data will be to begin the wholesale extermination (metaphorically) of White Van Man.

  • Euan Gray

    Guy,

    I suppose the difference is that you don’t have to have a Tesco card.

    As for the other things, is it not the case that the card is intended to track the type of transactions money-launderers do actually make, as opposed to the legitimate everyday stuff? It won’t work, of course, but it seems like this is the intention.

    I do not believe that this will result in the death of White Van Man. Already, many things are illegal but happen anyway – untraced and untaxed business cash transactions, Sunday markets where you buy the pirate and fake goods, the worthy Pakistani merchant’s corner shop where you buy the cheap fags and untaxed booze brought in by the vanload from France, etc. In countries where they really do try very hard to track and control the citizenry like this, still there are unofficial, parallel or black markets (select euphemism of choice) where things aren’t traced, tracked or logged. If anything, I think there is likely to be an increase in the number of outfits like Honest John’s Independent Traders – the more regulation you have (beyond a certain point), the more people try to avoid it.

    It is already the case that if you buy things using a credit or debit card, or make use of a customer loyalty card, all your purchases are logged and tracked. Should the police need to look at this, then of course they can – but right now they need warrants and probable cause. I do not imagine that they, or anyone else, would be remotely interested in trawling through your activities for a bit of voyeuristic fun on a wet Tuesday afternoon – but if you attract their attention for whatever reason they’re going to look into it anyway, with or without an ID card system.

    I also do not imagine that buying a second hand car from Joe Bloggs at number 47 is going to require identification. In any case, however you buy a car, you are obliged to register your ownership already. Technically, if you sell your car privately like this your are supposed to inform the Inland Revenue (there is a limit on how much income you can get this way without paying tax on it), but of course people don’t and the revenue hasn’t got the time or manpower to investigate it.

    If you open a bank account, you already need to identify yourself. If you apply for a credit card, you already will only get one if the issuer is happy that you are an acceptable risk, which means he needs to investigate your record of credit, residence and employment.

    All in all, I can’t see it making a huge difference to private transactions like this, and there is always a way around it. This is one of the reasons I object to the proposal – it won’t work because it can always be circumvented. In theory, it could be a foolproof system of identification, but this would require a degree of competence and diligence from literally millions of people in literally millions of organisations both state and private, ALL of the time – and this simply will not happen.

    Think about it – in Britain, there are something like 59 million citizens and other residents, plus who knows how many people who really shouldn’t be here. There are about 4 million registered businesses, over half of which are not registered for VAT. There are innumerable unregistered businesses, people doing odd jobs from home, and so on. Against this, there are half a million central government civil servants and about 130,000 police. They can track and log and control everything? I don’t think so.

    EG

  • Adhib

    John K and EG – My understanding is that this alleged ‘US mandated’ requirement for ‘biometrics’ that the UEreaucrats keep hiding behind is … a passport photo. The US transport police have gone the facial recognition system route (guaranteed to generate approximately 5,000 false positives a day at the average international airport). In their case, it seems likely that the biometric scanning device will quickly have to be upgraded to those high-tech, state-of-the-art, semantically-programmed, human face evaluation devices familiar to the rest of us as ‘passport control staff’.

    As the link I posted earlier should reveal, the ‘US requirements’ are being used as a shameless excuse in the EU for demanding much more intrusive biometric data. The Cato Institute has a large print explanation (100k pdf), in language simple enough for any Congressman, why any US national ID card will not get accepted without a fight. That is, I accept, a fight that Americans are slowly losing.

  • Euan Gray

    Adhib,

    You are correct, current US plans for biometric passports for US citizens include only a digital photograph and machine readable data relating to the passport details. However, one might emphasise ‘current.’ Other US plans for identification of citizens (the vast majority of whom do not hold passports) are somewhat more complex and it is highly likely that current trials on fingerprint and scan based biometrics for certain specific purposes will become more common as the technology matures. I expect the US will have fingerprints and scans on their own passports within a few years.

    But what America wants to put on its passports is another matter. What America requires from foreign citizens is somewhat open-ended – basically personally identifying data and “other such information as the Attorney General determines is necessary for the identification of persons transported, for the enforcement of immigration laws, and to protect public safety and national security” as stated in the legislation.

    America requires biometric data to be on passports. However, it doesn’t say this has to be in the form of fingerprints or retinal scans – that comes from an internal EU agreement made in Greece in June 2003 and is purported to control EU immigration policy. It is likely that the US government will record and use the extra biometric data so helpfully provided on EU passports, of course. It might also be noted that the US does not have any data protection law, and therefore there are few legal restrictions on what can be done with personally identifying data (biometric or not) garnered by the American government.

    AFAIK, there is no EU mandated requirement for biometric national ID as proposed by the UK government. However, the biometric passport including retinal scans and fingerprints is an EU requirement, and since Britain is one of very few countries in the world which doesn’t have a national ID system, one can see the state’s logic in killing two birds with one biometrically-enhanced stone.

    EG

  • Nicos Souleles

    One way or another I don’t think we should give up yet. Increasingly the public can rebel against the ID cards, as long as we manage to keep it in the news.

    I am writing regularly letters to the editors and to my local MP. I am planning another information blitz locally…

    It is great to meet you all on the blog but let us keep the pressure up in the non virtual world as well.

    If you gaven’t written to your local MP or your local newspaper, the time has come. Keep the pressure up, inform people, pass the message… ID cards are their own worse enemies, the more people know about them the better…

    Nicos