UK policing minister Chris Philp wants to integrate data from the police national database (PND), the Passport Office and other national databases to help police find a match with the "click of one button."

There is no way that the UK could have done that while it was part of the EU, but thanks to Brexit the government is free to keep tabs on poor people in anyway it likes.

Civil liberty campaigners have warned the plans would be an "Orwellian nightmare" that amounts to a "gross violation of British privacy principles".  That attitude might cause a few problems for the government – the UK has never been able to bring in an ID card like many countries.

Philp said that foreign nationals who are not on the passport database could also be found via the immigration and asylum biometrics system, which will be part of an amalgamated system to help catch thieves.

Philp was speaking to the converted at the Conservative party conference presumably to reassure the blue-rinsed faithful that the government knows what it is doing.

He said: "I'm going to be asking police forces to search all of those databases -- the police national database, which has custody images, but also other databases like the passport database -- not just for shoplifting but for crime generally to get those matches because the technology is now so good that you can get a blurred image and get a match for it.”

We are not sure what manual he has been looking at but it was probably one of those crime shows where they ask for a picture to be enhanced to that the police can read the name tag on the robber’s jacket.

The move will also require the creation of a new centralised data platform, which the UK government is very bad and producing. This job in particular will require uniting several disparate databases which were built for different purposes.

The job will go to an outsourcing company with links to the ruling party which will spend years failing to do the job with cost overruns in the millions. It will then end with the job being abandoned and possibly a government inquiry into the waste.

Until the new platform is created, he said police forces should search each database separately. [...] Philp said he has already ordered police forces with access to the passport database to start searching it alongside the police national database, which stores custody images.

The Tories are currently the underdogs for the coming elections and are looking to shore up support amongst their faithful.