ID CARDS COSTS

The Government's flagship white elephant that is ID cards is never that far way from the news. So in the past week or so we've had LibDem leadership - more like hand-bags at dawn than a genuine contest albeit there are mild signs that potential tantrums between the two are getting a little bit uglier (see here) - contender, Nick Clegg, attempt to claim some sort of moral high ground over the issue. Despite this inspiring a certain amount of aeration from that stalwart, Guido (see here) (and I do not disagree with the fundamental point he is making about the responsibilities of legislators), Clegg's position is not quite as 'principled' as it may outwardly appear, as John Lettice points out in The Register (see here). It seems the perennial Janus-like habits of the LibDems aren't going to be excised any time soon.

Be that as it may, there is another reason why the whole shebang might resurface again in the dead tree press over the next week or so. You, dear reader, will recall that, in order to get the ermine-clad monkeys to let the Bill through, the Government had to concede to publication of a six-monthly financial health-check of the whole vainglorious scheme as provided for by Section 37 of the Act. The Act received Royal Assent on 30th March, 2006. So, on strict interpretation of the text, the Home Office is required to publish its Cost Report on 30th March and 30th September each year. Well,... 30th Sept has been and gone without a sniff of the relevant Report and so Basher Reid's "not-fit-for-purpose" HO is in breach of its statutory duty.

Of course, dear reader, you will also be aware that this isn't the first time the HO has failed in this particular respect. This year's previous Report (and an exceptionally skimpy, disingenuous piece of work it was too - available here), due as I say on 30th March, wasn't published until 10th May. That failure provoked this somewhat genteel exchange on the red leather benches. I suppose, if a generous frame of mind were applied, the deadline for publication could be stretched to 10th November - previous late publication of 10th May + 6 months - but, in truth, I'm not holding my breath that even this will be complied with. (As an aside one can only speculate what havoc would have been wreaked in the Home Office had The Great Bottler not bottled it and we had been in general election mode over the past month or so!) Whatever, can we expect Baroness Noakes, as the prime mover of the original amendment in the Bill, to be tabling another question in the Lords asking the Government why they seem serially incapable of complying with their own laws?

This, after all, is the real significance of the issue. An administration that expects us as citizens to comply with 1,000s upon 1,000s of new laws, regulations, imposts, edicts, &c that they have imposed upon us since it came to power in 1997 cannot even be bothered to obey this relatively trifling statutory requirement imposed upon itself. And that, my friends, really does beg the question of whether we shouldn't perhaps follow their example and be somewhat more contemptuous of what they legislate into law, supposedly in our names. And ironically, this brings us full circle to Nick Clegg's less-than-principled stand on ID cards. We could perhaps have more faith in his leadership ambitions if he took this concept to heart rather than indulging himself in essentially meaningless gestures in an unedifying attempt to establish his putative libertarian credentials.