ID cards: the first year report Sir Joseph Pilling, the ID commissioner who oversees the ID card scheme, said he is generally satisfied with progress after the first year but it was too soon to give it a clean bill of health. In a 28-page report presented to Parliament yesterday by Home Secretary Alan Johnson Pilling said: "my initial reaction is to be …
Readers may be curious to know how Sir Joseph got his job providing "independent oversight" of the ID Cards scheme, despite having worked for 20 years for the Home Office, the very department that's now actively selling ID cards.
It turns out that the government spent £42,000 on recruitment consultants and £9,000 on advertising this post in the Sunday newspapers and on the internet. Twenty people applied and six were interviewed - after which Sir Joseph, who did not apply and was not interviewed, was 'phoned at home out of the blue by his former Home Office bosses to be offered the job. He's paid £88,000 annually for a three-day week, and reports directly to the Home Secretary, the minister who's relentlessly promoting the ID cards scheme. His annual reports are vetted by the Home Secretary before publication, and he has no powers to investigate individual complaints or to punish the Home Office if it abuses the personal data that will be held in the massive database behind the ID cards scheme.
References:
FOI request about how Sir Joseph was appointed
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/recruitment_process_for_identity
BBC News story about his appointment and pay
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8376193.stm
Sir Joseph's biography, including his career at the Home Office
http://www.relationshipsfoundation.org/about/biogs/joseph_pilling.php?p=2&c=5
His first report, in which he says he provides "independent oversight"
http://www.identitycommissioner.org/cps/files/idc/live/assets/documents/FirstAnnualReport_Final.pdf
Identity Cards Act. Section 22 says what he can and can't do.
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2006/20060015.htm
I recently renewed my passport and had to deal with the Identity and Passport Service on the phone. I love the fact that we have a Govt body looking after my identity, and presumably conferring it upon me, or at least confirming i had one.
Yet it was my understanding that free-born English persons were assumed to come with an identity and with rights that a Govt could only abrogate with their collective permission.
Or did I miss something on the route from the Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution to the upheavals of the 1840s to the 20th century.
The EU is forcing Britain to change from English Common Law (where your beliefs come from) to the Napoleonic Law prevalent on the Continent, under which the only rights a man has are those permitted him by the government.
There is a saying that in Britain a man can do anything unless it is specifically proscribed by law, whereas in Germany a man can do nothing unless it is specifically permitted by law. This sums up the difference rather neatly; and frighteningly so for those who live in a Britain now subsumed into the EU, whose de facto government is not only Napoleonic, but neither elected nor accountable.
I was once told by a newspaper editor in Glasgow that the essential difference between the Scots and the English is that the former see authority as their master while the latter see it as their servant. For Scots substitute Europeans and you will see what the essential problem is.
Under the Napoleonic Law of the EU the State is the master of the people; under English Common Law it is their servant. Not hard to see why the British people have been lied to so systematically by the political classes in their self-serving determination to join their powerful pals in the EU.
Proving your identity, and the Master/Servant relationship inherent in doing so, may be rooted in the psyche of Napoleonic Continentals, but it has no place in the lives of the Freemen of Britain. "Who am I? Mind your own business and get back to running the Country; that's what we, the people hire you for". We won't be able to say that for much longer, now the hirelings are becoming the masters.
He doesn't care about security or anything like that. His lifelong dream has been realised. Sir Joseph has been at the Home Office since year one and throughout that time the HO has been pressing for ID cards. It's hard to believe his anything other than a firm supporter of the scheme.
Our only hope is that Sir Joseph will be out of a job in a few weeks. No doubt to spend more time with his luxuriously furnished pension in the country.
Sir Joseph wrote to NO2ID but has provided no particularly good reason why it is worth our while meeting him. Because he is trying to consult people and make his office look of value is not really sufficient.
His report puts our correspondence in a misleading context. Our response to his first letter was:
<blockquote>Dear Sir Joseph,
Thank you for your letter, which just arrived. NO2ID is, of course, aware of your recent appointment as Identity Commissioner.
Given the tightly circumscribed nature of your statutory role and the clear intention of the Identity and Passport Service to proceed with its roll-out of ID cards and a National Identity Register along the lines laid out well before your appointment, it is unclear to us what, if anything, remains open to debate or consultation, or how you are able to influence the development
of the scheme.
I would certainly be willing to speak with you, if there were any prospect that our meeting could lead to a restriction or abandonment of the Home Office's scheme. Otherwise my time is better spent in further promoting the widespread public opposition to it. For now I am somewhat perplexed as to what the basis of our discussion might be. I would be grateful if you could
explain how you see your office could act as any constraint at all on the activities of the Identity and Passport Service.
Yours sincerely,
Phil Booth</blockquote>
No explanation has been so far forthcoming.
Guy Herbert
General Secretary, NO2ID
Well, I'm a member of NO2ID (unless I forgot to renew my sub) but let's face it - I could be attracted to a job that pays £88K a year for a three-day week of doing, essentially, nothing. Oh, and a half million (every year, I take it that means) to set up my "office". It's intriguing to wonder what kind of office or equipment are necessary for the exacting task of writing grovelling reports that say ministers are right about everything and ID cards are doing a great job. (I could do that right now, armed with nothing but a simple PC and a text editor - although no doubt I'd have to translate it into Word for the government to take notice of it).
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
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