ID Cards won’t work; will waste money and will treat you like a criminal
State plans to fingerprint every citizen in Cambridgeshire - and charge you for the privilege

Malcolm Moss MP for North East Cambridgeshire added his support to a new campaign against Labour’s plans for ID Cards. Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, has pledged to scrap the controversial £20 billion scheme.

Under the Labour Government’s plans for ID cards:

Every citizen will be fingerprinted and interviewed, and forced to travel at their own expense to a regional centre. The nearest centre to North East Cambridgeshire is in Peterborough.

Each person will have to pay at least £93 for a combined ID card and passport package.

If the card is lost or stolen, the replacement fee will be at least £30. If you get married and change your name, you will have to pay for a new card as well.

Malcolm Moss remarked,

“ID cards are a bad idea. They will do nothing to improve the safety of our citizens. They are not the answer to the threat of terrorism, to benefit fraud, illegal immigration, human trafficking or to identity theft. They are a waste of money, and a Conservative Government will abolish them.

 “The Labour Government’s plans are to make ID Cards compulsory for everyone, and force people to pay to be fingerprinted by the State. Instead of these intrusive, expensive and ineffective ID Cards, the money should be spent on more worthwhile projects to cut crime - such as a dedicated UK Border Police, more prison spaces and increasing the number of residential drug rehabilitation places.”

Notes to Editors

·            ID cards won’t prevent terrorist attacks: The former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, has admitted that ID cards would not have prevented the 7 July 2005 bombings in London, saying: ‘I doubt if it would have made a difference’. In Spain, ID cards are compulsory, but they did not stop the Madrid bombings in March 2004.

·            ID cards won’t prevent illegal immigration: Foreign visitors will not have to have an ID card, unless they plan to stay in the UK for more than three months.

·            ID cards won’t prevent identity fraud: Microsoft’s National Technology Officer, Jerry Fishenden, has said that introducing ID cards could make identity fraud worse, warning that it could ‘trigger massive identity fraud on a scale on a scale beyond anything we have seen before’.

·            ID cards won’t prevent human trafficking: ID cards are no substitute for a border police force and proper checks on people entering and leaving the country. In 1998, the Government abolished border controls, but its replacement, a computer-based e-borders scheme will not be fully installed until 2014.

·            ID cards will cost each person £93: According to Government estimates, you will pay at least £93 for a combined ID card and passport package but, given this Government’s appalling record of implementing IT projects, this figure is likely to go up. Also, if your ID card is stolen, or your lose it, you’ll have to pay £30 for a replacement. If you change your name when you get married, you’ll have to pay for a new ID card. If one of your relatives dies and you forget to return their ID card, you could be fined £1,000.

·            ID cards scheme will cost up to £20 billion in total: While the Government claims that the scheme will cost £5.4 billion of taxpayers’ money, the independent London School of Economics estimates it will cost up to £20 billion.

·            ID cards could be another Government disaster: This Government has a terrible record of large scale IT disasters. For example, the botched introduction of the new Child Support Agency computer system led to a backlog of 250,000 cases; clerical errors and problems with the tax credits computer system led to millions of incorrect payments; and an audit of the Police National Computer by the Met Police found that 86 per cent of records were inaccurate.

·            ID cards give the State too much personal data in one place: Your ID card could hold almost 30 separate pieces of personal information on you, including your name, date and place of birth, gender, previous addresses, photograph, signature, fingerprints and other biometric details. All this information will also be stored on a massive Home Office ID cards database, called the National Identity Register.

·            ID cards mean intrusive interviews and fingerprinting: From 2009, unless you opt out, when you renew your passport you will have to visit a Government ‘interview centre’ and give the Government your fingerprints in order to get an ID card. Fingerprints will also be required for the stand-alone ID cards.