Willie Rennie got a pretty good splash of headlines yesterday after he raised his concerns over SNP plans to create a massive ID database in Scotland. The Scotsman has details:

The Scottish Government is considering an extension of the NHS central register, which is already the “most complete and authoritative record of individuals in Scotland”.

It currently covers about 30 per cent of people, but ministers want to extend this and share information stored with more than 100 government agencies – including HMRC for tax ­purposes.

A similar population register was ditched south of the Border when controversial and expensive plans for ID cards were scrapped in 2010.

Willie said:

People hate the idea of ID cards in this country. They would be intrusive, expensive and increase the power of the over-mighty state. They were rightly scrapped in the rest of the UK. It relied on a giant identity register keeping track on all of us. It’s a big concern that the Scottish Government is building the skeleton of a national identity register in Scotland. It’s one skip away from a ID card and it needs to be stopped.

They are planning to take information on people using the health service and allowing access to 120 other organisations.

Despite the obvious risks to personal freedom, the Scottish Government is yet to conduct the necessary Privacy Impact Assessment. We have no information on how SNP minsters would propose to keep information safe when such a wide range of people would have access to the database. They’ve not even set out the estimate of the costs involved in this massive data expansion.

The Scottish Government should call a halt to the new super ID database.

It shows how much people need the Liberal Democrats to stand up for civil liberties. The Conservatives are campaigning to restart the Snoopers’ Charter at a UK level and are being restrained by the Liberal Democrats. In Scotland, the nationalists are constructing a national identity register by the back door. SNP ministers must halt the roll-out of this super ID database.

This is the latest in a long line of illiberal measures from the SNP, from allowing the routine arming of Police to the unregulated, extensive use of stop and search. They have had to backtrack on those things. Let’s hope it’s the same on this new invasion of privacy.

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* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social