Daily Mail 7th September 2008
The Government is paying a top advertising agency to ‘sell’ its controversial £20billion ID card scheme to the public.
The Home Office has employed M&C Saatchi to mount a marketing blitz ahead of the National Identity Scheme’s launch in November.
ID cards will allow the Government to hold the personal details of 60million citizens - including fingerprints and iris patterns - on a central database.
Ads for IDs: The Saatchi & Saatchi offices in Charlotte Street, London
But there are fears that fraudsters, terrorists or blackmailers could steal the information and use it for criminal purposes.
Despite this, the Home Office has ordered that all non-EU workers living in Britain hold an ID card as of November.
M&C Saatchi will begin the campaign with TV adverts and posters explaining the cards’ ‘benefits’ to a sceptical public.
Labour campaign: A Saatchi advertisement for Gordon Brown in 2007
The firm is also believed to be behind a Home Office website, www.mylifemyid.org, which has been advertised on social networking sites Facebook and Bebo since July.
The site invites youngsters to sign up for ID cards on a ‘purely voluntary basis’.
The advertising company is run by Lord Saatchi, a former Conservative Party chairman
M&C Saatchi is part-owned by Maurice Saatchi - a former chairman of the Conservative Party, which has vehemently opposed ID cards since they were first mooted in 2001.
Last night, critics labelled the move a ‘desperate spin operation’.
Shadow Immigration Minister Damian Green said: ‘This lays bare the level of desperation at a Home Office trying frantically to spin its way out of a terrible policy.
‘The Government ignores just about every independent assessment of the ID scheme, which either finds it too costly or damaging to our civil liberties.’
Under Government plans, ID cards will be held by everyone over 16 from 2017.
However, a damning report from the Home Affairs Select Committee warned that ID cards could be used by the Government to spy on its citizens. It said: ‘We are concerned about the surveillance potential of the scheme.’
Matthew Sinclair, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘If the Government still can’t convince people that it is a good idea, then they should accept that rather than spending more public money trying to change people’s minds.’
Saatchi provided promotional material to help bring the 2012 Olympics to London
A spokesman for the Home Office said: ‘We have appointed M&C Saatchi to work with us and we will be ramping up our efforts to communicate ID cards to the public as we approach November.’
M&C Saatchi declined to comment.
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