Police or plastic? - Opinion Poll launched

We have launched an opinion poll on this web site to see if people prefer the government to spend money on ID cards or more police. Read our article and then vote.

The Government's identity card scheme will be expensive and ineffective. We would scrap it and use the savings to put 10,000 more police on the streets, and equip them to combat crime more effectively. Every adult in the UK would save at least £30 as they would no longer be forced to buy an identity card. More police will be better for tackling crime and terrorism than a piece of plastic.

The proposal to make it compulsory to go onto the identity register and receive an ID card when you apply for a new passport means that ID cards would be compulsory for anyone wanting to ever travel abroad (the vast majority of people). We consider this a breach of Labour's manifesto commitment that: "We will introduce ID cards... rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports."

You can back the Lib Dem campaign against ID cards at our special no to ID cards website.

The Liberal Democrats are continuing to oppose the ID cards bill as it passes through Parliament for the following reasons:

Our 10 reasons to oppose ID cards

1. It will cost a fortune.

The Home Office expects the cost of the introduction of ID cards, together with the development of biometric passports, to be £6bn over 10 years. Individuals will have to pay £93 for a passport and ID card together, and registration will be compulsory when your passport comes up for renewal. Costs are likely to be much higher depending on which public services insist on inspecting our ID cards before we access them - putting biometric card reading equipment in every bank, benefits office, GP surgery and post office, for example, would be hugely expensive. The published costs do not yet include figures for the cost of card readers, of training staff, or developing fingerprint and iris biometrics. The London School of Economics has estimated that the unit cost may rise to as high as £300.

2. It will turn into another expensive IT fiasco.

The government in general and the Home Office in particular, have an appalling track record when it comes to large-scale IT projects. New systems at the Post Office, Passport Office, Probation Service, Police Service, Courts Service and Child Support Agency have all run massively over budget. The ID cards scheme would be the most ambitious and expensive public sector IT project ever undertaken. It has all the hallmarks of a disaster waiting to happen: no-one has spelt out what the cards are for and how they will achieve their objectives; it has been proposed in response to political events (notably 9/11) rather than a sober assessment of costs and benefits; building the system is complex and massively expensive; the cost estimates are vague and incomplete; and the project is reliant on new and untested technology.

3. It will lead to discrimination and harassment.

ID cards will undermine the contract between the police and the public. Government assurances that the card will not be compulsory to carry are meaningless because the you can still be linked to the database through your biometrics - face, fingerprints and iris. A roadside fingerprint check is all that is needed to check your identity. Given that the government wants the police to use the cards to detect more illegal immigrants and suspected al-Qaida terrorists, we can expect most of these stops to target black and Asian people. People seeking GP and hospital treatment will have to present their card. Again, the government's concern is to prevent so-called 'health tourism', so black and Asian people will have to run the gauntlet of identity checks while white people will not. Alternatively, everyone will have to prove their identity whenever they visit the GP (i.e. moving from a system based on trust to one based on distrust), which will quickly alienate the majority. People who refuse to carry an identity card will be discriminated against - they will be denied access to public services like hospital treatment and benefits and also private services like banking and credit.

4. It will create a bureaucratic nightmare.

In order to make the ID card system work, there will be a new national database of everyone in the UK. This will contain everyone's name, address, age and gender. Hundreds of thousands of people in London alone change their address at least once a year. Many change their name through marriage or by deed poll. Even if an accurate database can be constructed, the errors will quickly mount up. Errors will result in people's cards being rejected and access to services being denied. Similarly, people who forget to take their card (e.g. when collecting their pension) will be inconvenienced. Centralising the many existing methods of proving identity sounds like a good idea, but in practice breakdowns in the system will have serious consequences for both convenience and security. A successful attack on the system (e.g. over the internet) could paralyse the UK economy.

5. Our personal data will be shared without our consent.

Although the central database will contain only limited personal information, this can be expanded at a later date. Even if security on the central database is very tight, problems arise from the fact that everyone will be given a unique number to identify them which will be encoded on the card. Other databases (for example store loyalty cards or medical records) will be able to index their services using this number. Knowing the number could therefore allow sensitive information about that individual to be retrieved from any number of other sources.

6. It will encourage fraud.

Some benefit fraud may be prevented by requiring people to produce their card to claim benefits. However, most benefit fraud involves claimants misrepresenting their circumstances rather then their identity. In practice, the value of the card as a strong guarantee of someone's identity across a range of valuable services will mean it will become a target for forgery by fraudsters, criminals and terrorists seeking to disguise their true identities. The government is taking the 'Titanic' approach to the technology by claiming that it is unforgeable - history suggests they will be proved wrong.

7. It will not prevent illegal working.

The Home Office wants to make it compulsory for people to present their card when applying for a job in the UK, and claims that this will prevent illegal working. But employers in industries with high levels of illegal labour are already required to check identity documents. The problem is that the Home Office doesn't inspect them to make sure they are following the rules. There were only 2 prosecutions for employing an illegal worker in 2003. The fact that illegal immigrants will not be able to get ID cards will not change anything as long as there are unscrupulous employers and lax Home Office enforcement.

8. It will not help to fight crime or terrorism.

The police do not generally have a problem identifying people they arrest: the problem is in catching the criminals in the first place. ID cards would not present an obstacle to most terrorists either. The terrorists who attacked New York on September 11th 2001 and Madrid on March 11th 2004 carried valid identity documents. Knowing someone's identity does not necessarily help you to predict how they are going to behave. The government believes that one in three terrorists use multiple identities, which would be much harder to do once compulsory ID cards were introduced for everyone. However, this leaves the modus operandi of 2 out of 3 terrorists unaffected, to say nothing of the way the one third with multiple identities might change their behaviour in response to the scheme.

9. We do not have a written constitution.

This means the government can get away with expanding the uses of the card and lowering the safeguards on data sharing. The relationship between the state and the citizen is not properly defined in law. Every other country that has a system of compulsory identity cards also has a written constitution. We will be passing a law on the understanding that this government will not use the system to spy on its citizens or restrict civil liberties - even if that were is true, can we be so trusting of future governments? The identity register will hold only basic details, but it will include a record of every time the individual uses the card, quickly building up an accurate picture of our lives which will be available to the government in a range of circumstances. This means that a future government could easily use the scheme to monitor individuals or specific groups, and restrict their entitlement to services. The Bill also allows the Home Secretary to expand the scope of the register by order. This is open to abuse. When ID cards were introduced in 1939 it was for 3 stated purposes: conscription, national security and rationing. By 1950, an audit found that this had expanded to 39 stated purposes. The risk of 'function creep' is very real.

10. The money would be better spent on other things.

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.

The Liberal Democrats would:

Fund 10,000 more police on top of Labour's plans - as well as completing existing plans for an extra 20,000 community support officers to back them up.

Equip police with new technology to cut time spent form-filling and help them tackle crime (e.g. handheld computers for beat bobbies so they don't have to return to the station so often).

Support the inclusion of biometrics in passports only, as a means of combating cross-border crime, illegal immigration, terrorism and fraud.

Establish a National Border Agency by bringing together the officers from immigration, police and customs who currently have overlapping responsibilities at our ports and airports.

Crack down on illegal working by improving the way the home office inspects and prosecutes employers of illegal migrants.

Allow the use of phone-taps and other 'intercept communications' as evidence against suspected terrorists in court, to make it easier to bring them to court.

You can check on the progress of the Identity Cards Bill through Parliament on the Bills Board, which includes the position of the Liberal Democrats on all the major pieces of legislation currently going through Parliament. The Identity Cards Bill includes information about amendments to the Bill made in the House of Lords.