Adam Smith Institute

The announcement that the government will now be issuing ‘foreign national ID cards’ is another step along a slippery slope. Although initially they will only be issued to foreign nationals entering the country, things will not stop there. A substantial timetable has already been drawn up which could see their universal use by 2018.

It is predicted that this scheme will cost £311mn of taxpayers’ money. Considering that a majority of the population are against the introduction of ID cards this is grotesque misallocation of government money. One of the main arguments for the introduction of these cards is to combat terrorist events such as the 7/7 bombings. But those terrorists were British; they would have been free to travel on any buses around the country with or without ID cards. If a foreign terrorist is determined to kill for his religion, will a piece of laminated plastic really make him think twice?

This is simply an expansion of the surveillance state and another example of poor top-down schemes from an out-of-touch government. Perhaps rather than simply adding another layer of bureaucracy to national security, the government should concentrate on freeing-up the police force with less Whitehall control.

The second main reason for the introduction of these ID cards is that they should help control immigration. But since 2004 there have been falls in the level of net migration into the UK and we have seen waves of past migrants leaving the UK in recent months. Perhaps our over-regulated and stifled labour market isn’t as attractive to migrants as the government thinks.

Personally, I think the government needs to rethink its strategies for combating problems such as national security; clearly generalised and half-blind schemes such as ID cards are not only an injustice on civil liberties, but also a waste of valuable money.

Social Democrats across Europe still espouse the wonders of the Swedish welfare state, claiming it to be the model that should be translated into their countries. It appears nobody has told them that the Swedish model is no more. For a while now, Swedish politicians have been busy reforming the state in an attempt to meet public expectations. Opposition parties in this country should take note.

Swedish school reform – the inspiration for Conservative education policy – gets a lot press, yet as this article in the Financial Times shows, reforms have been radical across the board. Arguably, the biggest concern in this country surrounds the disastrous state of public finances. Compare this to Sweden, where “Anders Borg, the finance minister who will present his budget this month, says Sweden can now afford the biggest fiscal boost in Europe – equivalent to 1 per cent of GDP – to counteract the global economic slowdown”. Despite the fact that Swedish politicians still work within the language of the welfare state, they have been busy breaking down state monopolies, opening up competition and cutting welfare to incentivize work.
 
It is not the just the current centre-right government that has led these reforms. The previous Swedish Social Democratic Party, led by Göran Persson was equally keen. As Waldemar Ingdahl, President of the Eudoxa Think-Tank states in a letter to the Financial Times: “the former Social Democratic government instituted far more radical changes than Mr Reinfeldt”.

Fear not Guardian readers, there is one area of change that the right-wing Swedish government should back away from. In June, the Swedish government approved a new law permitting surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that cross the country's borders. And government officials filed a complaint against a blogger who published documents revealing that Swedish authorities have long engaged in domestic surveillance. This video documentary explains the situation well. What they give with one hand, they take away with the other.