So David Blunkett spent a lot of this time garnering headlines for his ID scheme. Despite a split in the cabinet over the scheme, he seems keen to press ahead and get ID cards into the Queen’s Speech.
The core reason for introducing this big brother regime, is seemingly to keep track of illegal immigrants, and stop them accessing public services. Sorry I don’t quite understand how this will work. At the moment, there are many illegal immigrants who don’t have National Insurance Numbers, yet can find work – mainly because there are plenty of people willing to pay cash. This isn’t going to change with ID cards – unless we become some kind of totalitarian regime in which the police stop us in the street for no reason, demanding to see ID. Blunkett says that this wouldn’t be the case.
The BBC report describes Blunkett’s move as being seen by analysts (?) as “an effort to grab the initiative after a difficult few weeks for the government.” I don’t quite understand this. Grab an unpopular initiative? At the moment, supporters say that people are in favour of ID cards, but that’s primarily because the real privacy issues have not been discussed.
At least The Guardian understands the real reasons behind the ID Card scheme – it’s nothing to do with illegal immigration, that’s just something that resonates with the Daily Mail and Sun reading population at large. It’s to do with centralising data about the people of this country. It’s power.
To see how much of a red herring the illegal immigrant idea is, consider the number to be found in countries like Italy where ID cards are already compulsory. Not much effect there is there?
I was interested to see what other papers made of Blunkett’s appearance yesterday, but sadly neither The Times, The Independent nor the Telegraph thought it worth a leader.
Returning to the transcript of the Frost interview, I love the way that Blunkett won’t use the word “mandatory”.
I also note that Stand have updated their website with some pieces of secondary legislation to do with the RIP act.