Leader of Liverpool City Council Warren Bradley today received an email request from the Labour Government’s Identity and Passport Office, asking for a meeting to discuss the North West “launch plans” for the expensive and unnecessary Identity Card Scheme.

The invitation stated: “The North West Region is going to be a key area for us in the rollout of the National Identity Service, with Identity Cards for British Citizens being available in Liverpool early in the new year.”

Confusingly, just 48 hours previously, Labour’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his conference speech stated: " [In] the last two years we have looked again at how we can give the best security to our British citizens while never undermining their liberties.

We will reduce the information British citizens have to give for the new biometric passport to no more than that required for today's passport.

And so conference, I can say to you today, in the next parliament there will be no compulsory ID cards for British citizens."

Commenting on this, Leader Warren Bradley said:

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this email, after hearing Gordon Brown’s comments on the scheme just hours earlier.

“The most outrageous thing of all is that the Labour Party is trying to trick the people of our country into thinking that they are not implementing the illiberal ID cards, by pretending they are not compulsory.

“What Labour’s Gordon Brown failed to mention in his speech is that if you renew or apply for a passport or driving license, your details will be entered onto the Government’s national database regardless of his hollow promises of the scheme being cancelled!  And we all know how good the Government is at looking after databases!”