View From The House - 18th November 2004

Reprinted From The Lichfield Mercury

Last Sunday at 11am the Queen laid a wreath at the Cenotaph. Across the land and in Lichfield, Burntwood, Abbots Bromley and other Staffordshire villages too, this Remembrance Day was repeated. By remembering the past, we can try to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. But 86 years after the war to end all wars, British troops are in action in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots throughout the world. And it was our forces on active operations now that I thought of as I laid the wreath on behalf of Parliament in the Memorial Gardens by Lichfield Cathedral last Sunday.

Next year marks the 300th Anniversary of the founding of the Staffordshire Regiment at the King’s Head Pub in Lichfield. Still as active a watering hole as it was back in 1705. But alongside the Black Watch and other regiments, the Staffords face an uncertain future. Tony Blair’s decision to cut down the Army from 108,000 to 102,000 soldiers is perverse given we have a greater need now for infantry to serve round the world than in many previous years. A father came to one of my surgeries a while back to complain that his son had been removed from university where he was studying and had to make up numbers in Iraq. How many other reservists, who are also full-time students, have been called up in this way? I asked the Armed Forces Minister, but he couldn’t answer. “We don’t keep that sort of information” he conveniently told me. And with a reduction in the armed forces, the need for training camps is reduced with one out of the four Army Training Regiments facing closure. Consequently, a very real threat now hangs over the future of the barracks in Whittington.

Security and Identity Cards

Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is announcing a whole series of steps to increase our security. Some measures will be window dressing, others will be worthwhile. I hope that measures to control the animal rights extremists that have been plaguing Yoxall and the surrounding area will give the police the powers they need to stop the intimidation of innocent people that has gone on for so long.

Mr Blunkett also plans to introduce national biometric identity cards together with a national database of every man, woman, and child in the land. The plan is to eliminate ‘identity theft’ which enables people to carry out benefits and credit card fraud. It will help reduce, in theory, the million or so illegal immigrants the Government has allowed into our country.

But will it work? I have no objection to the use of these cards in principle: we already have driving licence and social security number databases. But I do have detailed concerns.

Will ID cards really deter terrorists or prevent illegal immigration? Will the database be secure or will it be accessed unlawfully? Remember the animal rights activist who was recently convicted for accessing the DVLA computer revealing the owners, and the addresses of their homes, of vehicles driving into the Newchurch guinea pig farm. Will it be an offence if someone has accidentally forgotten their card at the time of any police check? If the answer is no, what practical advantage does an ID card give? If the answer is yes, does this mean that police will have the right to stop and demand sight of the cards? If this is the case, will this cause problems similar to those surrounding the old stop and search rules and considerable extra paperwork for the already overworked police? And are we all going to have to pay for our identity cards — yet another stealth tax?

Like all legislation, the devil will be in the detail………….