The Guardian's write up of the meeting covers some of the points we missed out in our report of the Home Affairs Committee oral evidence session on ID cards above:

"Minister blocks use of ID cards as school 'passport'"
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
Friday December 12, 2003
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1105276,00.html

The Times has a similar article:

"No school ID needed for illegal migrants’ children
By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,174-928949,00.html

Kablenet also have a report of the session:
"Home Office prices ID cards
12 December 2003"

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/B972713EF5FD2A6D80256DF9006581FF?OpenDocument

It is interesting how our eyewitness report and analysis is so different from that of the professional media.

Does anyone know how to (legally) get personal information about this Katherine Courtney? Since she clearly has no concept of the importance of personal privacy, perhaps she needs a lesson.

"Katherine Courtney also seemed to utter the words "literally impossible to forge""

Well what she actually said was that because of the plan to use 2 Biometric Identifiers, if you lost your card or if someone had stolen it, then these Biometrics would "make it virtually impossible to pass themselves off as you".

This is *still* a statement that is only ever heard from the Home Office, and not even from the most eager and enthusiastic sales people from the Biometric industry itself.

The transcript of this "uncorrected oral evidence" is now available online:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmhaff/uc130-i/uc13002.htm