The future security of every family and child in the country has been compromised by the recent loss of child benefit details.

News of further electronic data losses has only reinforced the threat to our privacy.

But what will the long-term consequences be?

Identity theft is a real and growing problem.

The Government would have us believe that ID cards and biometric identification will solve the problem. In fact, it will make things worse.

You can change your pin number but you can't change your fingerprints.

Once on the National Database, not just your bank details but everything about you is vulnerable to theft.

All but three of the country's 69 new 'interrogation centres' are now open.

People applying for their first adult passport are already being called in. Soon those renewing their passports will also have to attend.

Plans to simultaneously issue ID cards have been quietly shelved until after the next General Election.

However, young people (students applying for loans, for example) will be 'persuaded' (that is, bribed) to have an ID card in the near future.

Meanwhile, the first GP surgeries have started uploading confidential patient records on to the NHS database ("The Spine"), and increasingly, schools are fingerprinting children as young as four (for registration, lunches, library books), often without parents' permission or even knowledge.

Children are growing up believing it is normal to be fingerprinted having done nothing wrong. This must stop.

For further information, visit www.leavethemkidsalone.com or www.no2id.net Stephen Nash Washington Terrace Middle Barton