Every citizen needs to be accountable and legitimised from birth. DNA and biometric data (fingerprints and iris scan) should be recorded at birth. One's personal National Insurance number should be used throughout one's life. One person, one number.

This is not some Orwellian nightmare, but a quotation from Jay Denson's letter in support of ID cards (Oxford Mail, May 23).

It is ironic, in the month when we marked the 50th anniversary of the defeat of fascism, that our Government is now trying to reduce us to numbers, to record our most intimate details on plastic.

In 1945, a Labour Government promised us welfare from cradle to grave.

Today, they threaten us with lifelong surveillance.

ID cards will give unprecedented powers to the Government with no guarantee that it will protect us.

Giving biometric details to the state is unsettling enough, but why should we trust this Government in particular, which criminalises whole communities (police stop and search of Muslims has increased by 300 per cent), cooperates in the United States' illegal and brutal torture programme in Guantanamo Bay, and tramples international law underfoot by joining George Bush in the invasion of Iraq?

Would ID cards stop terror or crime anyway? The 9/11 hijackers entered the US and enrolled in flight schools under their own identities.

Organised crime makes big bucks out of passport forgery and identity theft, and will simply exploit a new black market in fake ID cards.

Tony Blair has talked a lot recently about restoring respect, but he has no respect for peace, human rights or human dignity.

Funny he should mention respect -- George Galloway's Respect coalition is campaigning against ID cards, and against the human rights' abuses of the so-called war on terror.

Mr Galloway has shown he can stand up to the bullies in Washington, and you can be sure that he will stand up to the bullies in Westminster, too. Michael Evans, Marston Ferry Court, Marston Ferry Road, Oxford