Even when Home Affairs Minister Sen. David Burch gets it right, he gets it wrong.

Sen. Burch took to the podium of the AB Place media room again on Monday in part two of the expatriates' ID card saga to excoriate Shadow Finance Minister E.T. (Bob) Richards over his criticism of the proposal.

Mr. Richards, with whom this newspaper disagrees, claimed on Friday the cards "smacked very heavily of Nazi Germany" and would deter expatriates from working on the Island. Sen. Burch, who last week specifically said the cards were not a "Gestapo" tactic, showing he was at least aware of some of the criticisms that were likely to come, said on Monday that Mr. Richards should resign as a Shadow Minister because he had failed to declare an interest in the cards debate.

Mr. Richards' interest is that he is the chairman of a computer company that has a contract with the Department of Immigration to build a database for, among other things, work permits. This database could then be used by another contractor to produce the very ID cards that Mr. Richards was criticising. Mr. Richards maintains that he did not know about the ID cards until last week.

Mr. Richards could have avoided some trouble if he had declared his interest, such as it was. He could have said: "A company with which I am associated in doing some computer work for Immigration, which may have some indirect connection with the ID card plan.

"However, even if this results in me and my associates losing money, I think the ID cards are a lousy idea and should be cancelled."

The question is: How would Mr. Richards benefit from his interest in Immigration by criticising the plan? The answer is he wouldn't benefit, and if the Government followed his advice and scrapped the plan, he might even lose money. Sen. Burch seems to have totally misunderstood what constitutes a conflict of interest. In fact, if Mr. Richards had kept quiet about it because he was receiving money from Government, then that would have been a conflict of interest. He would, in effect, have been bought and paid for and would have failed in his duty as an MP to express his honest opinion on issues of the day.

Sen. Burch does not seem to understand this. But Sen. Burch took this a step further. Apparently people with Government contracts should not publicly disagree with the way Government plans to use their work.

It may be that in the military, where Sen. Burch draws most of his management skills, when you tell a soldier to charge a hill that's bristling with machine guns, the soldier will obey orders and won't disagree.

But democracy does not work that way. It is untidy and often messy, and there are plenty of disagreements. Sen. Burch then went a step further – a dangerous step. He said he now intends to review the contract of the company Mr. Richards has an interest in with a view to cancelling it, thus using the financial power of Government to punish someone for having the temerity to disagree with his policy.

Now that smacks very heavily of Nazi Germany.

Finally, there any number of discrepancies between the stories that Sen. Burch and Mr. Richards are telling. The amounts of money are different and the scope of the work is different. Mr. Richards says he did not know about the ID cards until they were announced. Sen. Burch says he was dismissing his own work. Perhaps an independent inquiry is needed to find out who is telling the truth.

But regardless of that, there's no need for Mr. Richards to resign – even if he is wrong about whether the ID cards are a good idea. He is entitled to his opinion – and that's the point of free speech.

• Yesterday's editorial should have stated that MPs' salaries are proposed to increase by 30 percent over two years, not 15 percent.