Richard Thomas has the slightly Orwellian title of Information Commissioner. It is plain from his interview in The Times today, however, that his primary objective is preventing the emergence of a Big Brother society, not promoting one. In candid terms he sets out his fears that Whitehall may acquire too much data about citizens and that this could be a threat to their liberty. He hints at a comparison with Eastern Europe but, sensibly, draws back from an analogy that might smack, as he puts it, of “paranoia language”. That he could discuss the matter in anything approaching such a vocabulary will, nonetheless, be seized upon by those concerned with civil liberties.

There are three proposed measures which Mr Thomas regards as potentially dubious. These are David Blunkett’s national identity card scheme, a separate population register planned by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the suggestion that a detailed database be compiled of every child from birth to the age of 18. While it is not being suggested that these moves are different strands of a collective plot, the cumulative impact, the Information Commissioner implies, will be the accumulation of a large and intrusive amount of material that, if precedent is any guide, will ultimately be exploited by more departments within Whitehall than is promised at the outset. This is a serious charge from a credible person and ministers should be obliged to respond to it.

The worries highlighted by Mr Thomas are, though, subtly different. There are and will be heated arguments over the principle and the practicality of identity cards. The Information Commissioner does not direct his fire in either of these directions. He instead observes that the rationale for this innovation has never been articulated consistently. He protests that ministers have produced several reasons why they favour this initiative, ranging from terrorism to immigration control to access to benefits and public services. The end result, he says, is an “all-singing, all-dancing” case for radical reform. But the Home Office would retort that the reason why it has claimed a number of benefits for ID cards is because there is a range of potential advantages.

The issues of the ONS population register and the database in the Children’s Bill are again distinct. The purpose of the ONS project is to create a data bank that will contain a person’s name, addresses, date and place of birth, gender and a unique reference number. The theory is that it will allow people to update their name and address by making one entry rather than having to contact several departments. This is not, on the face of it, an especially sinister move. Indeed, many might be surprised to discover that there is not such a register already.

There is more room for doubt about the child database sought by the Government. This has been promoted as the appropriate response to the failure of agencies to share information properly during the appalling life and death of Victoria Climbie. It is not clear that administrative imperfections, rather than human error of a basic form inside the social services, were really at the root of this tragedy. Ministers will have to provide compelling evidence if the House of Lords, in particular, is not to reject this legislation.

The core point made by the Information Commissioner must be respected. New technology has increased the means by which agencies can keep records on citizens. It is not clear that the Data Protection Act, 1984 is sufficiently rigorous to provide the necessary protection in a wired society. Parliament needs not only to look carefully at the Bills cited by Mr Thomas, but also to reassess the sometimes compelling demands of public policy and individual privacy.