Brown will say that ID cards will mitigate the economic crisis by delivering efficiency savings.

Nice to see: unexpected, but nice.

Good stuff. I don’t think Brown will do it. But good nonetheless. Hopefully people will think of other unnecessary things to cut back on, like the thousands of police at protests, new nuclear power stations, Heathrow expansion, and so on.

ID cards per se are slowly fading, or rather the necessary verification infrastructure (2M dedicated terminals?) is nowhere near even being planned. There are signs that some people in HO might actually be thinking of something useful, i.e. eID cards usable by all of us to secure online transactions, much as is being done or planned in other EU countries. The passport (and maybe an associated passport card available on request if we join the Schengen area) is the thing, and, despite information about IPS costs, the passport scheme is believed to be self-financing (i.e. our passport fees match the declared ‘costs’).

Well, that’s encouraging although I suspect Gordon Brown has his mind set on this as on many other things. Still, nice for an ex minister to agree with what many bloggers have been saying for a long time.

We could with seeing a few more on the Labour benches making similar remarks, but it’s as likely as reading a statement from the Pope’s wife.