The Identity Cards Bill passed its second reading with a majority of 31 and, unsurprising, the Government have moved a programme motion - otherwise called a ‘guillotine’ - restricting debate at the committee stage of the Bill to 19th July and leaving no time for either the Public Accounts Committee or Home Affairs Select Committee to examine the detailed costs of the Bill.

Translation - Rush job with as little time for debate/scrutiny as they can get away with.

Better still, Charles Clarke has announced that he will cap the cost of ID cards to the public, although he won’t say to how much at this stage.

How? How will he do that given the Government’s track record on delays and cost overruns on large scale IT project, where a doubling of costs to get the system working - if it works at all - is not so unusual.

Now I’m no economist - maybe if Tim Worstall pops by then he could critique what follows - but the Home Office’s position is ID cards have to be self-financing. There’s no Treasury bail-out in the offing if it does go pear shaped, at least not right now and possibly not ever as we can take it as read that if the Treasury is not going to put up any money for this system then, privately at least, Gordon Brown is unlikely to be much of supporter.

So with a cap in place, what happens if there is a cost overrun, and a big one. Where, if that happens - and past experience suggests that its more a case of ‘when’ and ‘how much’ than ‘if’ - will the money come from to cover the costs of the system?

After all, if the cost to individuals is capped then, presumably, the only other way to make the system pay is going to be either by -

a. ‘losing’ some of the implementation costs in other budgets by recharging part of the total cost to those Government departments and public sector agencies who make use of identity verification. So if the DWP want to use identity verification on welfare benefits claimants or the NHS want in to ascertain individual ‘entitlements’ to services or even just identify people who ship up in A&E unconscious in order to find their medical records in its own, hugely expensive - and over budget - system, then they have to pay for the equipment and services like any other third party user…

…except that if you lay off the cost that way then you’re taking additional money out of departmental budgets which means that the Treasury either has to give them more money - and raise taxes - or they will have to make cost savings in other areas, which generally means a reduction in services.

OR

b. increase costs to other third party users of the identity verification service, most of whom, like banks, building societies, insurance companies, etc. are in the private sector.

Ah, but now you start taking a few risks.

Price your services too high and the cost to the private sector could limit the uptake of these services. This is basic ‘bottom line’ market economics - business will only pay for a service if the benefits of the service to its business outweigh its costs.

And even if the private sector does pay the increased costs well then the other bottom line in business kicks in- whatever business has to pay gets passed on to us in increased prices so that they recoup their costs.

It doesn’t matter how you slice it, we end up paying the bill - the full bill - for ID cards and the National Identity Register. The only thing we don’t know at this stage is either how big that final bill will be and how much of it will it obvious that we’re paying in direct charges as opposed to what we end up paying for indirectly in either increased taxes, reduced services or higher charges when we but goods and services from businesses.

That’s what ’self-financing’ really means - we, the citizen, pay for everything one way or another…

…and on the basis of a simple ‘back of a fag packet calculation’ using the Home Office’s figures - £6bn split amongst 44 million adults and no concessions, so pretty much about as good as their own figures which look to have been pulled of Charles Clarkes arse for all they reflect the real costs - that comes to around £130-140 per person rising to double or even treble that figure is the LSE is anywhere near close in its estimates.

Assuming everyone pays - which I won’t be - so that’s already an extra £140 that you lot whole support this hideous bill are going to have to find between you for starters - assuming it even works in the first place.

On November 15th 2004, The Children’s Bill 2004 received the Royal Assent and became the Children’s Act 2004, having passed its third reading in the House of Lords by a mere 12 votes.

Reading what the DfES has to say about this Act it would seem benign enough -

The overall aim is to encourage integrated planning, commissioning and delivery of services as well as improve multi-disciplinary working, remove duplication, increase accountability and improve the coordination of individual and joint inspections in local authorities. The legislation is enabling rather than prescriptive and provides local authorities with a considerable amount of flexibility in the way they implement its provisions.

However, while mooching around the Information Commissoner’s website this morning - I was actually looking for his paper on the ID Cards Bill, but with no joy - I came across this ‘Memorandum to the Education and Skills Select Committee’ which proves, to my mind conclusively, that not only could function creep extend the use of the National Identity Register into areas which the Goverment has yet to reveal publicly, but that function creep will happen - and has already been planned for - and that provisions are already in place for new database systems which will ultimately be linked back to the National Identity Register.

What, you might think, has an Act which is supposed to improve children’s services, got to do with the National Identity Register?

Well, this -

In September 2003 the Green Paper Every Child Matters put forward Government proposals for local authorities to set up and maintain databases covering all children living in the local authority area. These databases were to contain basic identification and contact details for the child and their carers, contacts with the universal services of education and health, and contacts with other child care professionals who were dealing professionally with the child. It was also proposed that child care professionals would be able to put on an individual child’s record flags indicating that they had concerns about that child.

You’ll note that this proposal covers ALL CHILDREN, not just those about whom their may be good reason for official concern within Social Services, Schools or the NHS.

So what information will this new and largely unpublicised ‘universal’ Children’s Register contain?
(more…)

Forget the complaints from Opposition MP’s about the scheduling of the second reading of the ID cards Bill to coincide with today’s Internation Fleet Review marking that the start of celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

The Government could not have chosen a more apposite day for the debate given that its response to mounting opposition to the Identity Cards Bill takes it lead from Nelson’s famous actions at the Battle of Copenhagen where, holding a telescope to his blind eye, he ignored the intructions of the commander, Sir Hyde Parker, to disengage from battle with the words:

“I have only one eye,– I have a right to be blind sometimes… I really do not see the signal!”

Only Blair has no right to blind. Britain expects better from its elected leaders.

The Government’s proposals have been ruthlessly torn apart by almost every single independent commentator, every informed opinion that is neither aligned with Government nor seeking to profit from the introduction of this system.

The London School of Economics states that;

“the proposals currently being considered by Parliament are neither safe nor appropriate… the proposals are too complex, technically unsafe, overly prescriptive and lack a foundation of public trust and confidence… The concept of a national identity system is supportable, but the current proposals are not feasible.”

The majority of the IT industry press is against the proposals as they stand;

“The pro-ID arguments the Government has put forward… have been well rehearsed, some of them over a period of years, and are as flimsy now as they were in previous Parliamentary sessions.” - John Lettice, The Register

The Public Sector’s record in managing large scale technology projects is nothing short of abysmal;

“Anthony Sampson wrote in Who Runs This Place that the Civil Service doesn’t do project management, a statement backed up by the National Audit Office blaming the Home Office for ‘poor specification of expected outputs, weaknesses in service monitoring and inadequate control of purchases.” - Political Hack, May 28th

Government seems not to ever heard of the ‘Software Crisis’ despite it having been first identified back in the 1960’s - the suggestion, in the Wikipedia reference, that this has been ‘addressed’ by process models is, to say the least, premature.

Liberty expresses concerns about the civil liberties implications of a Bill which changes, fundamentally, the relationship between the citizen and the state;

“A cost of billions of pounds would be bad enough if the Prime Minister’s white elephant weren’t quite so dangerous.

When you add this to the huge social cost for race relations and traditional freedoms, you have an extremely rogue beast- born of political machismo rather than concern for Britain’s safety.â€? - Shami Chakrabarti

Then there’s NO2ID’s analysis

“Without reference to the courts or any appeals process, the Home Secretary may cancel or require surrender of an identity card, without a right of appeal, at any time. Given that the object of the scheme is that an ID card will be eventually required to exercise any ordinary civil function, this amounts to granting the Home Secretary the power of civic life and death.”

And my own humble efforts;

“…the National Identity Register does not create a ’surveillance state’. It does however put in the place the means the create such a state by providing a mechanism which enables a wide range of personal information held in a variety of locations, not all of them in government by any means, to be connected together to form a comprehensive ‘picture’ of who you are, where you are and, more importantly, what you’ve been doing.”

Even the Information Commission, Richard Thomas, has come out against the current proposals, describing them as “excessive and disproportionate” and noting that they could become part of a new “surveillance society”.

Faced with this opposition, informed opposition from a wide range of people who understand fully how databases, and therefore, the National Identity Register, could be used and misused, how does the Government respond?

It refuses to engage in any detailed debate with opponents, attempting to discredit the LSE’s research without ever revealing sufficient details of the practicalities and costs of its own proposals to allow for a full independent analysis to be carried out.

Blair has even said, only yesterday that it was too early to discuss a price cap on costs and argued that the legislation being sought by ministers was merely to allow government to investigate the practicalities.

Merely to allow government to investigate the practicalities? Isn’t that something you do before you introduce legislation?

Does this really suggest what I think it suggests? That the Government is introducing legislation for ID cards without knowing either that the system will work or how much it will actually cost? That my civil liberties and freedoms, not least the freddom to live my life free from unwarrented surveillance by Government are being denuded on the basis of little more than a bunch of back of a fag packet calculations based on numbers being pulled out of the Home Office’s collective arse?

The longer this debate goes on, the weaker the Government’s position becomes. Support for ID cards is dropping and will continue in free fall the more obvious it becomes that the Government’s ‘indicative’ costs for ID card are woefully underestimated.

At the same time, the Government’s other arguments get weaker by the day - this morning Charles Clarke, appearing on the BBC’s Breakfast news, suggested that one of reasons for having ID cards and the National Identity Register was to make data held on other databases, presumably tax records, medical records and even, you would guess, things like credit reference data, more secure, more accurate.

No only does this betray a wholesale lack of understanding of basic data security principles - one keeps personal data separate and unlinked precisely to make that data more secure, but it seems the Home Secretary has forgotten about the existence of the Data Protection Act, which exists in a part precisely for the purpose of ensuring citizen’s rights to scrutinise and correct information held about them by third parties.

The Government has failed at every turn to make its case for the introduction of ID cards, relying instead on half truths and sophistry to gull the public into accepting this Bill. Yet even now it has a choice. It can walk away having suffered no more than a little bruised pride and a deflated ego.

Better that than create Blair’s own personal ‘Poll Tax’ our of its own blinkered myopia.

The Government needs to remember Santayana’s admonishment that ‘Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’ and look back at the lesson’s of the Poll Tax and what happens when Government, out of arrogance and hubris, chooses of its own volition to ignore the will of the people.