Government Affairs Blog

A week is a long time in politics

To say British politics had an interesting week is something of an understatement. 
 
First, we had Alistair Darling in the House discussing the on-going problems of Northern Rock.  Then on Tuesday he was back in the Commons making a statement about the loss of two computer discs containing the personal information of 25 million people.  Some might say it was from the sub-prime to the ridiculous.
 
The story dominated the media and continues to because private data falling into the wrong hands is the potential disaster waiting to happen.  There was much discussion, debate and analysis.  There have been many reasons put forward as to why this happened.  Many of the views are based on the political position of the person. 
 
The truth of the matter is that for now we don't know exactly why the mistake was made, we simply know it was an awful mistake to make. 
 
Some argued that this is the end of ID cards while the Government continues to say Britain needs them more than ever.  There was a very interesting piece by Ben Goldacre in Saturday's Guardian about the dangers of relying too heavily on fingerprints and biometric data - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/nov/24/idcards.homeaffairs.
 
And during all this the ballot papers for the Liberal Democrat leadership arrived.  Both Clegg and Huhne have talked about getting power down to people.  This week David Cameron was in the Czech Republic saying much the same thing.  And even Gordon Brown has said in the past that communities must be empowered.
 
ID cards and data held by the Government makes most people think of a state that overwhelms the individual.  Yet politicians from all the parties talk as though they wish to go in the opposite direction. 
 
What all this means only time will tell.
 
Simon Goldie is a member of the CIPR GAG committee and Head of Communications at The Chartered Institute of Taxation - www.tax.org.uk