Beverley Hughes is the Minister of State for Citizenship and person in charge of investigating introducing Identity Cards into the UK. She said a very odd thing in Parliament last week:
Mr. Paul Marsden (Shrewsbury and Atcham): If he will make a statement on plans to introduce identity cards. [109766]
The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes): We published a consultation paper on entitlement cards and identity fraud on 3 July 2002. We are at the moment making a detailed assessment of the 2,000 responses received to the consultation exercise, which ended on 31 July. Many organisations and individuals have expressed support for a card scheme, and that has been backed up by other research on the public’s views, which we will publish alongside our response.
What’s peculiar about this is that I know for a fact that at least 5029 consultation responses were submitted via stand.org.uk. Of course, that consultation ended on the 31st January, not July, but I assume that’s just a slip of the mouth from Ms Hughes. Unless she’s planning to retrospectively change the dates, and dump several thousand voter’s responses (most of which were resoundingly negative) out into the Home Office dustbins?
I’m going to mail her later today and find out what’s going on.