Tories on the attack over IT projects

The Conservative party warned today that it would scrap a number of large citizen databases and “revoke the powers” of the state to spy “excessively” on citizens, if it won the next general election

It said it would scrap the identity cards programme, the DNA database, and the ContactPoint database of all children

David Cameron, party leader, told an audience at Imperial College: “Today we’re in a control state. There are one million citizens on DNA database. Soon we’ll be forced to surrender fingerprints to identity cards

Britain had become a “control state”, he said, in which citizens were being excessively watched walking down the street, and councils were using legislation to monitor resident’s behaviour even in their own homes

His speech follows on from continued warnings by the Conservative party that it would scrap the identity cards programme

Concern over government IT programmes is likely to be a battleground in a general election, due to take place by summer next year.