LETTER: MP Ann Keen must withdraw her support for the ID cards scheme

12.00.00am GMT Thu 22nd Nov 2007

Following the revelation that the personal details of 25 million parents and children have been lost by the Government's Revenue and Customs department (HMRC), and may have fallen into the hands of identity fraudsters, local MP Ann Keen must withdraw her support for the ID cards scheme and a National Identity Register. How can we trust the Government to safely store the personal information of everyone in the country?

The fiasco at HMRC has shown the dangers of any Government holding huge amounts of information about each one of us, whilst being slipshod in the way that same information is kept. The National Identity Register, which the Government are setting up as part of the Identity Card scheme, will hold vastly more information on each and every one of us than Customs and Revenue managed to lose. The possibilities for the loss of that information, either accidentally or through illegitimate means, must make the Government stop and think again very seriously about their plan to store all the data they can on us in a central register.

State control of personal identity details is a real threat to our civil liberties. The Government should respond to the anger and abandon its ID card scheme. It is clear that the Government cannot be trusted to manage effectively mass databases of personal information, particularly when they leave departments woefully under-resourced.

Ann Keen voted for Identity Cards when the scheme went through Parliament, despite some Labour MPs taking a principled stand and joining the Liberal Democrats in voting against the Government's big brother plans. I hope a debacle on this scale gives her cause to think again and she will press the Government to end the Identity Card scheme for good. The people of Hounslow do not want the Government to risk a personal data disaster on an even more catastrophic scale.

Cllr Andrew Dakers

Leader of Hounslow Liberal Democrats

Parliamentary Candidate for Brentford & Isleworth