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08 May 2010
Conservative leader David Cameron has pledged to scrap Labour's unpopular identity card scheme in an attempt to woo the Liberal Democrats into supporting what would be a Tory minority government.
As the results poured in overnight it became clear that the Tories would fall just short of the majority of seats needed to form a government. In the end they managed 305 seats to Labour's 258 with the Lib Dems holding the balance of power with 57.
At a press conference yesterday David Cameron outlined what he described as a "big, open and comprehensive offer" to the Lib Dems and their leader Nick Clegg to join a formal coalition or a more informal "confidence and supply" arrangement.
Cameron refused to budge on immigration, the European Union and defence, but outlined several areas where he believed the Tories and Lib Dems shared common beliefs. Key among these is the scrapping of the unpopular national ID card scheme.
"We share a common commitment to civil liberties, and to getting rid - immediately - of Labour's ID card scheme," he said.
ID cards were a flagship Labour policy designed to fight the growing threat of identity theft, fraud, illegal immigration and terrorism, but the scheme has been attacked by civil liberty groups and business as the implementation costs soared.
Labour even went so far as to guarantee that the scheme would not be compulsory if the party were re-elected.
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The article reads as if Phil Muncaster has not been following the detail of the ID scheme and the parties' positions. The Conservative party has been pledged to scrap the ID scheme for several years, and well before the election Mr Cameron was saying it was one of his earliest priorities for a Tory government. He may be emhasising it as a point of similarity with the LibDems' programme, but he has changed nothing to woo them. All organised parties except Labour in the present parliament are agreed on this. Meanwhile, readers should note the Labour manifesto promise was neither a change in position nor quite what it seems. The Home Office line, repeated faithfully by ministers since 2004, has been that the scheme "will not move to compulsion" until approximately 10 years after mass registration begins and the vast majority of people are already enrolled. Mass registration, currently scheduled to begin in 2011/12 is not however to be "voluntary" in any sense that most peopel would recognise. It would first be made impossible to apply for a passport without being entered, for life, with no way back, on the National Identity Register. Any other document issued by or under statutory authority could be 'designated' in the same way, and living a normal life or pursuing your career could be made impossible without your agreeing to be registered, and this would still make it 'not compulsory' according to the Home Office because you could possibly survive without doing any of the things where ID would be required. That is the sense in which the Labour manifesto is using the terms, though I doubt 1 in 10 candidates who stood on it understands the fact.
Posted by: Guy Herbert (General Secretary, NO2ID Campaign) 09 May 2010