Another Door Closes

Well the Bill got past its third reading last night with 309 votes to 284, a majority reduced further than when the Bill had its second reading, despite promised concessions. Nice to see the select committee process earning its dues, hem-hem.

With popularity dropping every day for the scheme (the media seemed much more interested in putting the boot in this time 'round, although they were handily distracted by the Tory leadership battle, another dirty trick pulled by Labour), we can but hope that the Lords will join in with the kicking. There is the belief that, with the scheme appearing in the manifesto, the Lords will feel dutybound to pass it. However, this is the House that has already suffered too often at the hands of the Parliament act, so the Lords overlooking such quaint traditions as shoddily founded mandates, and kicking the NID Bill back to the House Of Commons could well be on the cards.

What has also been fun has been the sheer audacity of Charles Clarke, who having been told that the treasury will not be putting up money for the scheme, and already having explained that the £5.9 billion [sic] budget is for the creation of the scheme, not the implementation of it throughout the Government, is now turning round and trying to touch other offices for the rest of the money. If I were Gordon Brown I'd run the guy out of town on a rail. I'm hoping that the Yes, Minister view of the civil service will bear out, and that interdepartmental machinations will ensure Clarke doesn't get a bean.

And I notice with some amusement that the Google Adsense bar is now responding to the post about the reading frenzy and purchase of a magic prop - thus next to the "Some Lies" article were adverts for card tricks and illusions. What a critic! And while we're on the subject, here are some additional lies that have been told:

We'll be able to log on to a web-site (yay! Websites!) to check who has been accessing our information.

Again, as there is no workable security system that will allow this, it stands as a great weakness to the security of the system. More of Clarke protecting us all from Data theft? I wouldn't trust him to look after my children. And I don't have any children.

The information held on the card will be the same as the information that appears on the (biometric) passport.

More misdirection - he's made no concession as to the information that will appear on the registry, and it is the registry that is the problem.

Information that won't appear on the registry includes NHS and CRB information.

Therefore either having attempted to touch the NHS and others to pay for the scheme, they won't get any benefit from it, or the NHS and CRB databases will be redesigned to include the NID number, effectively connecting them into one metadatabase. Note he's been careful in stating that no information from other databases will appear on the NIR, meaning that information can and will flow in the other direction. As soon as the unique identifying numbers appear in other databases then those databases become part of the database. Clarke's promise is empty, meaningless and dangerous. As usual we are faced with a minister who is either conniving or incompetent. Coin, anyone?