A government with access to personal information could deliver welfare and services much more easily – and could also be a bulwark against the tech giants’ business practices

The government will need to intrude into people’s lives more than ever to cope with spiralling demands on the state’s finances. In the transition to greener technologies, the need to track who is emitting carbon and where they are doing it will only intensify.

Last week’s announcement by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, that he is employing more people to monitor cars coming into the ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) to make sure they are fined is another example of big brotherism that his counterpart in Manchester, Andy Burnham, decided Mancunians would not countenance.