Tuesday 30 June 2009

No to ID (if you really don't want to) says AJ

Hurrah for Home Secretary Alan Johnson for some common sense in abandoning plans for compulsory ID cards (for British nationals at least).

The new voluntary approach could still go further: we could volunteer not to do it, and to rely on the biometric passports. Questions remain about the nature and safeguards on a national database.

AJ is being interviewed on the PM programme: there is an echo of the refreshingly and perhaps excessively candid comments of Tony McNulty about not overstating the benefits of ID cards at a Fabian event back in 2005.

Even before the spending squeeze was so tight, a convincing cost-benefit analysis had never been made.

It has been a slow and lingering death for the compulsory ID card. There may be a little further to go.

But its nearly all over.

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