If Gordon Brown picks one failure from his first six months to learn from, it should be the loss of 25m people’s personal details. If he makes one resolution for 2008, it should be to scrap his reckless plan to introduce compulsory ID cards.

“Discgate” was the result of ministerial incompetence, but also flawed policy. As chancellor, Brown relentlessly pursued his forlorn vision of a “joined-up identity management regime” across public services. As prime minister, he continues this vain search, like an obsessed alchemist, for a giant database that his closest advisers ominously refer to as a “single source of truth”.

This fixation has not revolutionised public services. It has led to disaster. Brown’s approach combines three flaws: the ruthless pursuit of “identity management”; a naive faith in computerised solutions; and sheer recklessness in managing the integrity of systems to which he is devoted. This has delivered a massively overcentralised government and a surveillance society.

The government’s track record with IT and database projects is woeful. Take the Home Office. The criminal records bureau wrongly labelled 2,700 innocent people as having criminal records. The sex offenders’ register lost more than 300 serious criminals. And the convictions of 27,000 criminals – including murderers, rapists and paedophiles – were left off the police national computer. Finally, the DNA database combines the worst of all worlds: 100,000 innocent children who should never have been on it, 26,000 police-collected samples left off it and half a million entries misrecorded.

When HM Revenue and Customs lost 25m records, it was the latest of 2,110 security breaches in the past year. It ignored direct advice not to send sensitive data unprotected. The wider consequences remain to be seen. The review into the fiasco has already revealed that an American firm contracted by the Department for Transport has lost – in Iowa – personal details of 3m applicants for driving licences. It is, at least, now clear that the reality of data-sharing across government is a far cry from the “great prize of the information age” that Brown was boasting about in October.

A government that refuses to learn from past failures is destined to repeat them. But Brown continues his mission to find the IT panacea of public sector reform. And nothing can be allowed to detract from his quest to find the ultimate elixir – a national identity register coupled with compulsory ID cards.

The prime minister ignores categorical advice from experts. Microsoft’s UK technology officer warns that ID cards risk the “honeypot” effect of clustering masses of personal data in one place, presenting what one chief constable called the “gold standard” target for criminal hackers. Biometric passports can be cloned with a gadget costing £100 and the market in stolen identities is flourishing – a BBC investigation found forged documents being sold online to underage drinkers for £10.

If the government gives away your bank account details, it is a disaster, but at least you can change your bank account. What do you do if the government gives away your fingerprints?

Any countervailing security dividend, from the billions of pounds wasted, is negligible at best. Ministers have openly conceded that ID cards will do little to prevent terrorism or crime. The Home Office website lists, as popular myth, that “ID cards can stop global terrorism and crime”. Yet Brown continues to pretend to parliament that “an identity scheme will help prevent people already in the country from using multiple identities for terrorist, criminal or other purposes”.

Far from heeding Conservative calls to scrap the central ID database and focus on improving biometric technology and safeguards, the government is expanding its horizons further. It signed the Prüm treaty, which involves sharing fingerprints, DNA and car registration details across Europe. If the government cannot protect the personal information it passes round Whitehall or Iowa, how will it protect such data when they reach Warsaw?

Indeed the government is not a reluctant player in this European Union agenda. It is the pioneer, piloting Project Stork, the codename for a scheme to make all EU electronic identity networks “interoperable” within three years. It does not augur well that the home secretary had not even heard of Project Stork when questioned in parliament last month.

Instead of treating our personal details and private life as though they were the property of the state, it is about time ministers understood that this information is held on trust. We need serious restrictions on the transfer and sharing of such information. The current casual and careless practice is intolerable.

A Conservative government would not ignore the opportunities that technology presents for the public sector. But neither will we be blind to the risks in setting up mammoth databases with all their inherent frailties. A Conservative government will channel all its efforts into protecting its citizens, including their personal details. Information technology can help, but there is no substitute for careful, conscientious scrutiny by people with expertise and experience.

The prime minister’s lesson from 2007 should be that government cannot be run robotically – it needs a human touch. So his first resolution for 2008 should be to ditch ID cards, to avoid history repeating itself.

David Davis is the shadow home secretary

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