Identity Cards or Border Police? A fine reason to Vote Conservative

There is a lot of talk around the media about the convergence of the parties in their rush for the middleground. There is still more than enough difference to make voting Conservative worth the trip to the polls. The campaign against ID cards is one example of that difference.

Firstly, this is one of those issues that slipped through the net because of the disastrous state of the Tories at the time:

"ID cards won't prevent human trafficking: ID cards are no substitute for a border police force and proper checks on people entering and leaving the country. In 1998, the Government abolished border controls, but its replacement, a computer-based e-borders scheme will not be fully installed until 2014."

Conservatives now are right to make a huge stink about it. Losing control of our borders is a failure by this Labour government in one of its most important duties, to protect the nation.

This is a fine, conservative, account of how to use the money earmarked for the ID cards to genuinely make a difference to some of the problems it is purported to solve:

"More prison places, more prisoner drug rehab & a border police are good ideas

A Conservative Government will scrap the ID cards scheme. We will use some of the savings to build more prison places, provide more drug rehab in prisons and create a new border police force.

More prison places: Our prisons are desperately overcrowded, meaning serious criminals are escaping prison sentences and prisoners are not being rehabilitated. Instead of wasting billions of pounds on ID cards, shouldn't we use some of the savings to build more prison spaces?

More drug rehab in prisons: Drug addiction is a major cause of crime in society, but there isn't enough effective drug rehab in prisons to help get criminals off drugs for good. Instead of wasting billions of pounds on ID cards, shouldn't we use some of the savings to provide more drug rehabilitation to help prisoners kick the habit?

A Border Police Force: At present, many different agencies are responsible for aspects of policing our borders. Instead of wasting billions of pounds on ID cards, shouldn't we use some of the savings to create a new UK border police force to prevent and detect illegal immigration and to stop terrorists and suspected terrorists from entering the country?"

This is the kind of sensible position that Conservatives should be taking. Putting resources into the frontline services which keep crime at bay and help criminals reform rather than vast new schemes which will wind up causing huge amounts of trouble to the law abiding and involve vast cost without representing a serious obstacle to the criminal.