28 May, 2006: Flogging a dead safety elephant

[ Home page | Web log ]

Charles Clarke, then Home Secretary, answering a question from Ian Paisley, in the House of Commons during the second reading of the Identity Cards Bill:

[...] the Identity Cards Bill does not allow information to be provided from the national identity register to any foreign Government. That is the position--full stop.

Joan Ryan, now Minister of State responsible for ID cards, answering a written question from Lynne Jones, last week:

Section 18 of the Identity Cards Act allows information [from the national identity register] to be provided to overseas authorities, for example law enforcement agencies, for the purposes of criminal proceedings and investigations, as provided for in section 17 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.

The most charitable interpretation is a quibble over the difference between `allow' meaning to create a new power, and `allow' meaning to fail to prohibit the exercise of one which already exists.

Anyway, since that was about ID cards, you get a holiday photo:

Icy lake


Copyright (c) 2006 Chris Lightfoot; available under a Creative Commons License.