Dear [Afternoon]

Thank you very much for your recent letter to me with regard to your concerns about the Government's intention to introduce some form of ID card system in the UK in the future.

May I first of all apologise for the delay in my response to you but this is due to a heavy caseload coupled with the seasonal holidays.

I very much share your concerns and scepticism about the likely efficacy of such a system and would advise you that at the current time if this matter comes before the House of Commons I think that it would be extremely unlikely that I would support it.

If you would like to discuss this mater [sic] in more detail could I suggest that you contact my office and we can arrange a mutually convenient time to meet.

Thank you once again for taking the time to write to me and I look forward to meeting with you in the very near future.

Yours sincerely

Iain Coleman MP
Hammersmith and Fulham

Nice to see that there are MPs who are not keen to support this expensive attack on public freedom. I wrote to my MP, one James Plaskitt (Lab), who is sadly rather more gung-ho when it comes to ID cards.

I pointed out that the proposal has been defeated democratically by ordinary people in two separate Home Office consultations, and yet still Charles Clarke persists with this nasty and anti-democratic idea. I demonstrated that, on one occasion, Beverley Hughes appeared to mislead the House of Commons (or at least was distressingly misinformed) as to the number of opposing voices the consultation had received. I let him know that in a spectacular piece of trickery, the Home Office eventually collapsed over 5,000 individual letters (posted via an anti ID card website) into a single "petition" so that the government could say it got the support it needed (in reality, it didn't). And I wanted to know why it was that despite plenty of pro-card campaigning from the then Home Secretary, Blunkett was unable to find the time to come to a public meeting at the LSE in May 2004 to put his case forward.

I also pointed out that "commercial confidentiality" was being put forward by Home Office spokespeople to hide the details of a project that should be open to the most rigorous public scrutiny. I also told my MP that questions asked of volunteers in MORI card trials were not available to the public, that the proposed National Identity Scheme Commissioner would not be independent from the Home Secretary, that the attorney general Lord Goldsmith’s opinion on compatibility with human rights law will not be published, and that his report will not be made available to Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Having demonstrated that this legislation is shrouded in secrecy and that what has been obtained thus far has only been possible with the aid of deceit and underhandedness from Blunkett, Clarke and Blair, I asked Mr. Plaskitt whether he personally believes that the process to introduce ID cards has, so far, been fair. His response (quote): "We will take our time over developing this scheme and as we do we will be able to publish a lot more information about how the scheme will work, covering many of the aspects you raise in your own letter. I hope this information will at least go some way to reassure you".

Like a politician, he dodges the question entirely. I will write to him again to see whether Mr. Plaskitt really does look forward to the death of British democracy. Alas, I suspect he does.

We are, as you clearly show, being rode over rough-shod. This and other appalling breaches of the trust between the government and the people is why I can't vote Labour at this election, despite their track record of running the country. They may be able to operate the levers of this country successfully, but they're also selling us up the river, battering us to swallow a nightmare so they can wield more power.

I agree, though voting in the UK at the moment is something of a Hobsons choice. The Tories, who are desperately trying to outdo New Labour on "security" issues (quotes apply liberal amounts of sarcasm in this context) are just as nasty as the present incumbent - if Michael Howard is anything to go by.

It is true that we are being subjected to fear-inducing propaganda in order to justify the increasingly heavy hand of the state. Readers would be well advised to see Adam Curtis' "Power of Nightmares", which properly puts the "War On Terror" and other such smokescreens in the context of the real magnitude of these threats. Strangely, it was the BBC who screened this series, despite the fact that, for the most part, they have been giving the government an easy ride since the Gilligan affair.

Yeah, The Power of Nightmares was excellent. I would also recommend Edward Said's Covering Islam which was written before 9/11, but is still completely relevant. It's a little dense for my taste, but I found it worth the time.

ID cards are a key issue in a plethora of anti-liberties changes being made by this government, often with the support of the Tories, but even they stop short of some things. I've voted Labour before, tactically, but this time I will lodge a protest vote by siding with the Lib Dems. This is something of a quandry, my local MP is anti-ID, but I'm voting against the government, not him! My girlfriend made the point that I should be careful to check the policies of my local Lib Dem candidate thoroughly before heading to the polls.

If you would like to link to this entry, it will always be available at http://aftnn.org/journal/544.