Campaigners against the government's identity cards scheme sometimes warn that it will become Labour's Poll Tax. There may be more truth to this than people realise.
For the past two years Labour's Scottish Executive in Edinburgh has carried out an ID card experiment on the million elderly and disabled people of Scotland. Deeming this a success, Labour is now rolling the thing out in England.
Most will be familiar with Transport for London's Oystercard - a chipped “smartcard” that can track individual journeys. The Labour government has taken the Oystercard idea one crucial step further - by turning it into a full-blown multi-purpose identity card.
Unfortunately, they have decided not to tell anyone about this. Well, why risk frightening people! So the elderly were carefully led to believe that they were merely being issued with a new type of bus pass. Indeed, a much improved bus pass, because it would allow free travel anywhere in Scotland.
But the shocking truth is that Scottish pensioners were grossly misled. They were not issued with bus passes, but with one of the most intrusive identity cards to be found on the planet, a card which threatens to bring about cradle-to-grave surveillance.
The advanced database and identification technology involved in the cards would be forbidden in Germany, a country which actually uses ID cards.
This represents a massive scandal, but to date few know about it. With similar cards about to surface in England (on 1 April) it can only be a matter of time before the news breaks.