I'm keeping up my 100% success rate of being published in the Scotsman. This letter, in slightly edited form, was print on January 20th, 2005. >

Sir,

The government’s wrecking ball is swinging again, and soon another aspect of our traditional Liberty will have been ruined.

The Identity Cards Bill is now in the Committee Stage. The level of scrutiny that the MPs on the committee will be able to give the Bill is, however, questionable, since they have been allowed just over two weeks to examine it. The committee will then produce a report, which will be allowed a single hour of debate in the Commons. The Third Reading of the bill is limited to a single day.

Thus will a highly controversial Bill, with enormous cost implications, be bundled hurriedly into law, and our relationship with the State profoundly changed. The requirement for citizens to carry ID cards is an illiberal one, which is contrary to the British practice of living our lives free from the supervision of the State, and for which there is no peacetime precedent. The card will do nothing to counter terrorism, fight crime or reduce benefit fraud: in fact, it will cost more annually than the fraud it is supposed to address!

In Britain, cattle are tagged and recorded on a database. If the Identity Cards Bill becomes law, human beings will be too.

Yours sincerely

Jamie Young