Thursday, September 25, 2008

Chris Huhne on identity cards

From the Independent:

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said cards were a "grotesque intrusion" on the liberty of the British people and would be regarded as a "laminated Poll Tax" if made compulsory.
That's the stuff to give them.

The paper also quotes the admirable Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty:

It's going to take more than pastel colours and flowery design to persuade us to surrender our privacy and billions of pounds to boot.

"Picking on foreign nationals first is the nastiest politics; as costly to our race relations as to our purses."

David Davis says:

"There is no justification for requiring every British citizen to have an identity card and for innocent citizens to be required to submit their fingerprints to a state controlled database, with all the risks that go with that."
Which makes it rather a shame that he had a rush of blood to the head and resigned as shadow home secretary.

I fear the authentic voice of Toryism is to be found elsewhere:
MigrationwatchUK chairman Sir Andrew Green said the cards were "essential" to tackle illegal immigration.

1 comment:

dreamingspire said...

It appears to be EU policy to introduce these extra documents for non-EEA nationals resident in the EU for more than a few months (3 or 6 - not sure which). At least, this is widely understood in the technology supply chain, where they are referred to as eResident cards - but I cannot find it on an EC web site.