NO2ID lobby against the Identity Cards Bill 2005 - Monday 13th February 2006
This Monday the 13th February 2006, the House of Commons will be debating the Lords' Amendments to the controversial Identity Cards Bill 2005.
The cross party NO2ID Campaign will be lobbying their MPs:
NO2ID and Liberty will be holding an emergency lobby of Parliament on 13th February 2006, when the Identity Cards Bill returns to the Commons for consideration of Lords' amendments.The lobby will take place from 12 noon until 1:00pm on the sundial in Old Palace Yard. This is opposite the St Stephen's Gate entrance to the Houses of Parliament [location marked 'H' on this map]
This will be your last chance to make a visible protest against the Bill before it goes into Parliamentary 'ping-pong'. As always, we shall be laying on some props but please do bring your own banners and placards - the bigger and clearer the better.
To get an idea of numbers, we'd appreciate an RSVP. Please send an e-mail to events@no2id.net or fill in the form [click here] to let us know if you can definitely make it.
Please at least write to your Member of Parliament urging them to reject this Bill, or at least to accept the Lords' Amendments.
This is especially important if you are a constituent of a Labour MP, as they are being briefed with utter rubbish (.pdf) by Home Office Ministers like Andy Burnham:
- he repeats the falsehoods about the £1.7 billion of alleged "identity theft",
- he falsely claims that his figures "have been independently verified by KPMG as sound" - all they have done is approved the methodology used in the Regulatory Impact Assessment, but they have reservations about the actual figures, which are still secret,
- he continues to misleadingly criticise selective parts of the LSE Identity Project report
- he misrepresents the international requirements for Biometric Passports - the ICAO would be satisified with a far cheaper digitised photo in the smartcard and no centralised database of 13 biometrics etc which the Government's "gold plated" scheme intends,
- he neglects to explain why the UK Biometric Passport (not including the ID Card) will cost 85 Euros, but the German one, to the same ICAO specifications will only cost 45 Euros,
- he misrepresents the Lords Amendments, all of which only strengthen the democratic accountability of the Bill, and correct some but not all of the glaring errors put forward by the Government,
- he has no figures whatsoever which even guess at the alleged benefits of the scheme, especially in other Government departments or the private sector.
Are backbench Labour MPs so easily fooled ?