Ms Elizabeth Farries:

This certainly relates to privacy rights. The ICCL held a public meeting on the issue last month when we spoke out against public service cards. We invited people from the UK and in Scotland the Government has been unsuccessful in implementing their introduction. There has been a large response from knowledgeable people about the forms of surveillance within those cards and we have made it very clear that there are rights-infringing problems and no legislative basis for those cards without proper consultation. Nonetheless, the Government is still pushing them forward and investing huge sums of money in a PR campaign to convince the public that they are useful to have, for access to social services, pensions etc. The inherent privacy problems, meanwhile, are being pushed under the carpet.