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January 08, 2006
ID Cards and Local Councils.
Wondrous news!
Town hall bureaucrats are to be given sweeping new powers to investigate homes for identity card evasion and to impose heavy fines on occupants found without one.
The revelation, in an obscure Whitehall consultation paper, calls into serious doubt the Government's repeated promises that planned ID cards, already hugely controversial, will be voluntary and that no one will be forced to carry one.
Actually, I have a feeling that this is people thinking, not an actual decision made as yet:
The small print of a consultation paper published by Lord Falconer's Department for Constitutional Affairs, released during the Christmas holiday, reveals that town hall officials will be asked to police the scheme by using the Electoral Register to identify homes and individuals without cards.
January 8, 2006 in Scams and Frauds | Permalink
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» Government moots ID card links for new UK voter database from strange stuff
It has long been obvious that New Labour's claims that it's ID Card would be voluntary where bunkum. So it should not really come as a surprise that
Town hall bureaucrats are to be given sweeping new powers to investigate homes for identity card evasi... [Read More]
Tracked on Jan 8, 2006 6:01:59 PM
Comments
So, all thoses not on the electoral register will remain invisible. We're going to have to rely on this level of competence.
Posted by: Rub-a-dub | Jan 8, 2006 10:42:26 AM
Hmm, I live in Torbay. When I moved out of the area for 4 years and, obviously, didn't reregister, they kept sending me polling cards.
When I moved back to the area (into a less salubrious area admittedly), they still haven't actually managed to get me onto the register when there's an actual election.
I think I like the idea though; if it's going to be enforced through the register, then it's another poll tax.
Stupid people. When will they ever learn?
Posted by: MatGB | Jan 8, 2006 12:17:48 PM
This looks like a partly garbled account of the new "unique identifiers" arrangements for the centralised electoral register being brought in under the new Electoral Administration Bill; as usual, the government have taken a problem (low-tech vote fraud in Birmingham) and used it as an excuse for intrusive legislation and... another GIANT IT SCHEME! Bet you didn't see that one coming.
The interesting question is what happens to people who choose not to get cards or whose ID cards and NIR registrations have been cancelled by the government using the s.13 powers (which allow the Home Secretary to turn persons into "unpersons" essentially arbitrarily). When I looked at this I think the answer was that it would be up to individual Returning Officers whether they would be allowed to register to vote or not.
Some notes on this from an email I wrote a while ago.
Posted by: Chris Lightfoot | Jan 8, 2006 12:19:28 PM
Well that's OK - the electoral register is full of blanks. It's illegal (I believe) not to fill in the forms, bt it's one of those laws that isn't enforced, unlike paying Council Tax. They'd be better off checking against the names of council tax payers.
Posted by: laban | Jan 8, 2006 12:46:58 PM
