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February 2005 Identity cards would be an expensive and ineffective waste, according to Wimbledon's Liberal Democrat spokesman, Stephen Gee. "Even after the IRA pub bombings in the 1970s, the Government felt that ID cards would be of limited effectiveness – and ID cards did not stop the terrorist outrages in Madrid nor would they have stopped the attacks on 9/11; the money wasted on this scheme should be used for other initiatives, such as more local police officers", he said. The Liberal Democrats would scrap Labour's proposed ID cards and instead invest the money in other areas. Government figures currently estimate the cost of implementing the scheme to be up to £3 billion over the next ten years. In 1974, the then Labour Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, rejected ID cards as "extremely expensive and largely ineffective" and potentially an infringement on civil liberties, according to files released at the beginning of January under the 30-year rule. ------ NOTES For Liberal Democrat costings, see www.libdems.org.uk and http://www.libdems.org.uk/index.cfm/page.premanifesto/section.policy#ten See www.nationalarchives.gov.uk National Archive Catalogue refs: CAB 128/55/24 CAB 129/180/14
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