Civil liberties
Lord Steyn, a former lord of appeal in ordinary, has called for the identity card scheme to be scrapped.
Speaking this week, Lord Steyn highlighted the lack of evidence that a National Identity Register will serve to combat serious crime, and expressed concerns about the privacy implications for members of the public given the series of security leaks which have occurred.
“In my view a national identity card system is not necessary in our country. No further money should be spent on it. The idea should be abandoned,” he said.
Lord Steyn questioned whether the government was capable of running a national identity card system, citing numerous data losses since May 2007, including the loss of two discs of child benefit data lost by HM Revenue & Customs which affected 25 million individuals. Such instances, he said, “legitimately prompt the question whether the British public should have confidence in the scheme the government proposes to introduce”.
Lord Steyn went on to say that successive UK governments had constructed one of the most comprehensive and technologically advanced surveillance systems in the world. “The Home Office proudly asserts that comprehensive surveillance has become routine,” he said. “If that is true, the resemblance to the world of Kafka is no longer so very distant.” Despite recent contributions in the House of Lords to the debate on civil liberties, Lord Steyn said he doubted there was much hope of the executive taking action to counter the excesses of the surveillance society. “On the contrary,” he said, “the state relentlessly acts to extend surveillance practices and to diminish correspondingly our civil liberties”.
