Baroness Williams of Crosby Liberal Democrat Peer. AKA Dame Shirley Williams

Issues

Identity cards

Shirley said on "Any Questions" program on Radio 4. 9 November 2007

I think the ID cards are much more serious than people realise ... the absolute key thing, and I can’t stress this enough, is that the level of data that the government proposes to collect under the ID bill ... adds up, in my view, to a Big Brother scheme of the most terrifying kind.

Because it is so expensive our government will sell our data to commercial interests

It will be a record of where you’ve been, what you’ve done, who you’ve talked to, and I think its a terrifying scheme and I’m another person who’s prepared to say I wouldn’t cooperate with it in any way at all

When asked if she would court jail in her resistance to ID cards, she responded

Of course ... My view is that the identity card will undermine individual civil liberty so seriously that one is entitled to say that one won’t cooperate with it. I have not suggested I would use violence, I am suggesting I wouldn’t cooperate with it, nor will I.