A police chase killed my son

Dianne Homer's son Neil was killed on 17 December 1995, just two days after his 20th birthday, by a police car being driven at 100mph.

The incident happened in Oldbury in the West Midlands at about midnight, after Neil had dropped his girlfriend off at her house.

"He was travelling back home and was stationary at some traffic lights," said Mrs Homer.

"The lights turned green and he moved forward, but a police car doing 100mph hit him."

Neil was given assistance at the scene of the crash by a doctor who was nearby, but he died three hours later.

"We went out looking for Neil and came across the accident," Mrs Homer said.

Mrs Homer said the police car had been chasing a car they had suspected of being stolen, which they had believed had pulled away from a burglary.

The officer in the passenger seat of the police car, Pc Robert Dallow, 41, was killed outright, and the driver, Pc Lezlie Collins, was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving, of which he served six weeks.

Pc Collins was also briefly reinstated in his job by a West Midlands police disciplinary hearing, which sparked furious protests from the Homer family, before later retiring from the force.

Compulsory 128 mile trip to your nearest Interview Centre

More details of the proposed operation of the governments much ridiculed National ID Database Scheme have emerged this week.

People will be forced to travel hundreds of miles, at their own expense, and in their own time, to attend one of the Government ID Interview Centres. That's after you have paid for the privilege of obtaining the compulsory ID card.

Once there, they will then be forced to submit, willingly or not, to a series of biometric tests, the results of which will be stored permanently, and made available to thousands of Government Departments and private corporations and individuals.

Stranraer residents face a 128 mile trip to Kilmarnock to their nearest ID Interview Centre, and people living in Cambridge will be forced to make a 62 mile round trip to Bury St Edmunds.

Shadow home secretary David Davis has also criticised the government's plan to make people travel to interview centres to provide a biometric for the national identity card.

Davis branded the proposals an "outrage", and repeated the Conservative pledge to abolish ID cards if they get into power.

"It is bad enough that we will be forced to pay for an ID card, but to have to pay to go to a government centre to be interviewed and fingerprinted is an outrage," he said.

"The costs will hit low income families and pensioners hardest. Conservatives will abolish this costly plastic poll tax."

A Home Office spokesperson said "This has always been the case and we have been open about it."

The spokesperson said the decision to take fingerprint biometrics (for all 10 fingerprints) and store them in the National Identity Register was outlined in the action plan published last year.

From 2010, all passport applicants, even if they are simply renewing their old one, will also have to apply for an identity card. Fingerprints and iris scans are also required for second generation passports, due out in 2009