{"id":873,"date":"2007-11-11T17:02:54","date_gmt":"2007-11-11T17:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/?p=873"},"modified":"2007-11-11T17:02:54","modified_gmt":"2007-11-11T17:02:54","slug":"wife-of-former-downing-street-policy-adviser-lord-birt-set-to-land-2-billion-id-card-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/?p=873","title":{"rendered":"Wife of former Downing Street policy adviser Lord Birt set to land \u00a32 billion ID card contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wife of Lord Birt, the former Downing Street policy guru, looks set to land a massive contract to develop Labour’s controversial ID-card scheme.<\/p>\n

As No 10’s “blue skies thinker”, Lord Birt – who was criticised as a “croak-voiced Dalek” when he ran the BBC – advised on Government IT programmes and drew up a major report on criminal justice which analysed the effect ofidentity cards.<\/p>\n

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that his second wife Eithne Wallis, a senior executive at a Japanese computer giant, is poised to cash in on the policy he helped to develop.<\/p>\n

Ms Wallis, who married Lord Birt last year, is the director of government contracts at Fujitsu Services, which was last month shortlisted for the \u00a32billion contracts to operate the ID-card scheme.<\/p>\n

Last night the Conservatives expressed “concern” at the way the company could be benefiting from insider knowledge.<\/p>\n

Ms Wallis, 54, met 62-year-old Lord Birt, a former BBC Director General, three years ago on a Whitehall committee when she was head of the National Probation Service.<\/p>\n

Lord Birt went on to leave Jane, his first wife of 41 years, and to marry his mistress, prompting a major family rift. None of the children from their first marriages attended the low-key civil wedding ceremony.<\/p>\n

Ms Wallis, who was born in Northern Ireland, quit the civil service to join Fujitsu in February 2005 on a six-figure salary as a “senior member of the business transformation group”.<\/p>\n

She was promoted in July that year to her present post of managing director of government business and began positioning the company as a leading supporter of Labour’s unpopular ID-card programme.<\/p>\n

Fujitsu funded a Government report which showed how to overcome concerns from ethnic minorities that the scheme could lead to racial and religious discrimination.<\/p>\n

Then, last year, Fujitsu paid for a debate on ID cards at the Institute for Public Policy Research, New Labour’s favourite think-tank.<\/p>\n

Until December 2005, Lord Birt was occupying a Whitehall office drawing up secret reports for Tony Blair on issues ranging from criminal justice to Government information technology.<\/p>\n

According to reports, he regularly used to “chew the cud” with the Prime Minister on ID cards.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

As head of the BBC, Lord Birt was dismissed by writer Dennis Potter as a “croak-voiced Dalek” for stifling creativity and was lampooned by Private Eye in the column “Birtspeak”.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No actually, it is not Lord Birt who is chewing the cud, but the British people, the human cattle, who are going to be chewing the cud, and being herded like the bovine \/ human sub species they have become.<\/p>\n

This is the corruption that we know about<\/i>. There are, 1000% guaranteed more cases like this where ‘a friend of a friend of someone in the department’ has landed one of these criminal contracts.<\/p>\n

It is nauseating, infuriating and BAD<\/b>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The wife of Lord Birt, the former Downing Street policy guru, looks set to land a massive contract to develop Labour’s controversial ID-card scheme. As No 10’s “blue skies thinker”, Lord Birt – who was criticised as a “croak-voiced Dalek” when he ran the BBC – advised on Government IT programmes and drew up a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,7,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irdial.com\/blogdial\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}