Arun District Liberal Democrats call for end to ID cards

9.41.30pm UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 10th Jan 2008

Cllr. Simon McDougall - Leader of the Liberal Democrats on Arun District Council

Liberal Democrats in the Bognor and Littlehampton areas have backed calls to the government to abandon plans to make people carry identity cards.

Leading the call locally is Simon McDougall. He decided to voice his concerns after Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg MP published figures showing that 37 million pieces of personal information on UK citizens were lost in 2007, mostly by the Government.

The law bringing in ID cards has already been passed by Labour and soon most citizens will have to pay for an identity card.

"The expensive identity cards scheme is based on the government storing large amounts of information about each one of us on a central database," said Simon McDougall.

"But in 2007 the Government stumbled from one data loss crisis to another. The worst example came in November when the Government lost the personal details of all 25 million families with children. That has put the privacy of every family in the Arun District at risk.

"The dangers of putting so much information about every citizen in the UK into one central database are clear to everyone except, it seems, the Government. Ministers are in denial when they argue that the information will be safe and people's privacy will not be undermined.

"I am very pleased that new Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg is leading the battle to end the ID cards scheme. Liberal Democrats in Bognor and Littlehampton are right behind him. The plan to make everyone carry a piece of plastic should be buried before it ends up as another expensive government fiasco.

"The scheme will be a bureaucratic nightmare. It won't prevent illegal working. It won't help stop crime or terrorism. If the government really wants to make an impact on crime, terrorism and illegal immigration, the money it has earmarked for this scheme would be far better spent on more police and intelligence officers. That is what the Liberal Democrats would do."

Mark Foster, Littlehampton campaigner added;-

"The argument "if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear" has clearly been proved wrong, every resident of this country should fear this incompetent governments handling of their personal data. The best way of making sure that your data doesn't fall into the hands of organised criminals is to not have to hand it to the government in the first place".