1 May 2009 – John Barrett MP (Lib Dem)
John Barrett, Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West, was the first Westminster MP to address an Edinburgh NO2ID meeting.
He said that he had recently taken another look at the arguments in favour of ID cards on the Home Office website and found them to be lacking in credibility. The money would be better spent on putting more police on the streets and on the security services.
Big fear
His big fear was the database behind the ID cards, particularly in light of recent problems with Government IT projects and with loss of data.
He expressed concern about ID card function creep, as well as the difficulty of correcting inaccurate information once it was on the National Identity Register and linked databases.
He gave the example of Companies House mistakenly identifying him as a company director and the difficulty involved in proving that they had the wrong information.
Campaign
He urged people to keep campaigning for the abolition of ID cards and to question MPs during the next General Election campaign, despite the economic climate.
With three out of the four Edinburgh MPs being Labour members, he judged that the city would be a key battleground. He therefore urged us to raise the issue of ID card abolition with every candidate, formally and at the hustings.
Conservatives
While David Cameron and his shadow cabinet officially opposed the ID card scheme, some Conservative backbenchers and young right-wing parliamentary candidates were ambivalent.
If there were to be a coalition government after the next general election, he stated that the Liberal Democrats would hold the line on the scrapping of the ID card scheme.
Entitlement Card
The speaker was asked about the bus pass / Scottish National Entitlement Card. He replied that this was below the radar for most MSPs but that he would take up the issue.
He said local councillors were under pressure to reduce costs and make access to public services more efficient and so new IT projects could seem very attractive. However, he shared NO2ID members' concerns about function creep and the linking up of databases.