Greg Smith
Main Page: Greg Smith (Conservative - Mid Buckinghamshire)Department Debates - View all Greg Smith's debates with the Cabinet Office
(1 day, 23 hours ago)
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Robbie Moore
I absolutely agree that digital exclusion is a reality for all.
I ask everyone in this place and those watching at home, no matter their political persuasion, to imagine their worst ever Government: the one that keeps them awake at night and that they would march against in the streets. For many, I am sure that that will be this Government, but for some it may have been previous Governments. This single piece of digital infrastructure will hand that Government, whoever they may be, the key to our life. Once that digital infrastructure is set up, we cannot go back. Once digital ID comes into force, no political party can promise that its intentions will stay good forever. Put simply, an ID card gives the state permanent control, and I say no.
The slippery slope argument is so common in debates about civil liberties that it is almost a cliché, but once the digital identities infrastructure is in place, it will become so much harder for a well-meaning Minister to resist the idea that they can fix areas of public policy by tracking and controlling, at an ever finer level, how a population behaves.
Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)
We have a Government who could not even keep their own Budget under wraps. What hope do they have with our personal data?
Robbie Moore
That is exactly what a constituent of mine emailed me about—a constituent who voted Labour in 2024. They said, “If they can’t even control the leakage from the Government, how on earth can they control our data?”