The hapless Ms Hiller forgot her Identity & Passport Service (IPS) ID card. But then, so what? That card doesn’t help anyone important to identify her. No off licence has a card reader which can use the card to check that she really is the Minister for Identity and that she is old enough to buy alcohol or cigarettes or glue. No bank will accept the card as proof of identity, entitling her to make a substantial withdrawal from her account. Etc …

On the other hand, the bet is that she did have her credit cards with her in Liverpool. And her mobile phone. Those are ID cards. ID cards that she is very unlikely to have left at home by mistake. Because they really are, as near as damn it, essential to everyday life. Unlike IPS ID cards.

The importance of the mistake is this. Life is very difficult without ID cards of some sort. But we are already knee-deep in ID cards. It’s not a new requirement. IPS are in competition with the established suppliers, particularly the banks and, for the past 20 years or so, the mobile phone companies. And IPS show no ability whatever to win that competition. They have already lost. Their cause is hopeless.

The banks and the mobile phone companies could launch further rivals to the IPS ID card tomorrow and the sheer inane irrelevance of IPS’s offering would be immediately revealed. IPS are strongly recommended to run up the white flag quickly and voluntarily before they are forced into it. The longer they delay, the more embarrassing and humiliating will be the surrender.

Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee earlier this week:

Whitehall has turned to consultants to help with IT projects such as ID cards and the NHS IT system because of a lack of adequate skills among civil servants. However, Mr Neyroud said that some consultants at his agency [the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA)] were paid four-figure sums every day for doing “straightforward” jobs in finance and human resources.

The agency, which runs the Police National Computer, the DNA database and training courses for police, was created from four smaller organisations.

Among consultants who worked for the agency in 2007-08 were PA Consulting Group, Accenture, Capgemini UK and SunGard Public Sector, according to a parliamentary written answer.

Sir David Normington, the top civil servant at the Home Office, told the committee that he did regret the huge sums spent on consultants. “I think it has to come down — it has come down,” he said.

Here is the perfect opportunity for him to surrender with dignity.

ID cards are here to stay. IPS ID cards are not here and never will be.

Nowhere in the press (that I have been able to locate, but I am more than willing to be shown to be wrong) has it ever been documented that La Hillier has put herself on the perfidious NIR (be that no more than a comma-delimited list as it may well be at present). Ergo, she will have no card to bandy about. Ergo, excuse-o-rama.

I mean, if you ran the show, you would know just what an execrable load of zebu it is, and you wouldn’t subject yourself to it, now, would ya. Na mean.

(Happy to be shown to wrong).