IT is hard to see what all the fuss is about Identity Cards. We carry so many pieces of plastic around these days - many, from gym membership to driving licences, with our pictures on them - that one more won't add to the burden.

So many computers hold so much information on us all already these days - walk into any shop, give them a couple of letters and numbers as a postcode and they will tell you exactly where you live - that one more doesn't seem worth getting het up about.

And, really, if the Government does want to peer into our mundane, boring lives, let it - most of us aren't doing anything wrong and so have nothing of which to be afraid.

Indeed, ID cards may even have benefits. It will make it easier to check up on immigrants and benefit claimants, for example; it will stop us having to find our passport and driving licence everytime we wish to open a new account.

But it is hard to see what all the fuss is about ID cards because we don't quite understand why we need them.

As the Madrid bombings proved, they won't stop terrorism. No suicide bomber has brandished their ID card while detonating themself.

To most ordinary people, ID cards will just be something else to get lost at the bottom of drawers or down the back of the sofa or underneath the driver's seat of a car where they will lie undiscovered for months while being rendered useless by all that greasy stuff down there that helps the seat slide.

Then there's the question of computer competence. The Inland Revenue holds vast amounts of financial information about us, yet last week it was driving ordinary people to the verge of bankruptcy with its cock-ups over tax credits. The Passport Agency and the Child Support Agency all suffered similar problems.

You can barely book an appointment at your GP without the computer crashing, so can we confidently expect one to handle 60 million identities without problems?

Plus, finally, cost. A report today will put the cost at around £18bn. Which is an awful lot of money.

And for £18bn you could get an awful lot of policeman, benefit fraud officers and counter-terrorist specialists who might just do the job better.