WRITTEN ON December 6th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, What do we want?

…it’s a preliminary report. And you can’t have it, because it didn’t say what we wanted and this has tied all our knickers in the most frightful twist.” I paraphrase. Theyworkforyou has the following exchange (22 Nov 2007 : Column 1054W)

Public Private Forum on Identity Management

David Davis: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he expects the report from the Public Private Forum on identity to be published; and for what reasons its publication has been delayed. [166097]

Andy Burnham: Sir James Crosby was appointed to establish and chair the Public-Private Forum on Identity Management in July 2006 with a remit to produce a preliminary report to Ministers by Easter 2007. In March 2007 he discussed his preliminary conclusions with the then Chancellor of the Exchequer and was invited to work on with the Forum to produce a fuller report later in the year. The report is now being finalised. It is expected to be delivered to Ministers later this year, as agreed with Sir James. No date has been fixed for publication, which may be later this year or next year.

I asked a seasoned Whitehall-watcher what on earth this meant. See her answer below: She said it means roughly

Oh, how heartily we wish Crosby had said the HomeOffice-Intellect ID System was a good idea, and that all the money we spent making PA Consultants run round in circles while we changed our minds was well spent, that there was a market for it, that it made technological and social sense, and that our business case stood up. But it didn’t. So we’ve decided to pretend that report never happened, and will deploy a dazzling array of weasel words to muddy the waters and dig ourselves deeper into this hole of our own making.

Anyway, this is all just media mischief stirred up by the intellectual pygmies. We shall now shout louder and make everyone listen to what we have to say so they start agreeing with us and stop worrying that we never listened to them in the first place and still aren’t listening now.

We shall reclaim the pro-ID lead in the opinion polls, and everyone will have to admit that Clarke and Blunkett and me and that Minister who used to live in a squat in Brighton (or was that me?) and all those officials who’ve now gone on to other jobs were right all along. And sooner or later we’ll produce another report which makes all this completely clear and transparent. And our faithful minions will write to everyone to say that nobody, repeat nobody, is allowed to go to Seattle to meet Kim Cameron with all his weird ideas about ID systems that work and people like and are happy to use and have some sort of applicability on the Internet. We’re British and we’re not interested in that sort of thing (unless we’re Scots running Scotland, in which case Cameron’s laws are pinned on our walls. If we’re the Scots running England and Wales that rampant Kim-Cameronian claptrap wont do at all). We make the laws around here. Happy Easter everyone

Or something like that (if I understood her right)