Another report on immigration is out today - 5 years on from the signing of the treaty of accession in Athens - ACPO are claiming that stories of a migrant ‘crime wave’ are a myth. In fact, they say, crime in areas with lots of new EU immigrants seems to only have risen in proportion to the general rise in population.

The Telegraph covers it like this:

The report for the Association of Chief Police Officers appears to contradict claims made by several senior officers that forces require extra money to cope with an immigrant crimewave.

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As so many people have already pointed out, the loss of the UK’s child benefit database is a disaster for the government. The incompetence beggars belief. This data is so important it should be treated like the launch codes for a nuclear weapon - there is nothing indicating that people were taking it anything like that seriously.

Until the discs are recovered (if they ever are), it seems to me there will be little way of knowing whether they are or have been used for fradulent purposes, who has copied the information, where it might have been sent to, in what new formats. Of the 25 million people who have been put at risk, some are bound to be victims of identity fraud, by sheer law of averages. Each time one of them is it will make another negative headline - whether they were actually connected to these lost CDs or not. Iain Dale has also pointed out that some or all of the people exposed could, theoretically, sue the government (though they would, in effect, be suing themselves). The amount of negative publicity could be endless.

Let us assume, then, that this Labour government is toast, and that we can expect a Conservative government in 2010 at the latest. What does it mean for ID cards?
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