Labour in retreat as ID card plan is axed

THE government was accused of being "in chaos" last night after it all but abandoned its flagship identity card scheme.

In the latest in a series of U-turns and climbdowns from the cash-strapped government, Home Secretary Alan Johnson said the controversial cards would never be compulsory for UK citizens.

The admission came as he shelved plans for a pilot scheme to make airport workers carry the cards, triggering accusations of a "fudge".

The move will also fuel suspicions that the government is purging its least popular policies to go into a general election with a cleaner slate.

Officially, ministers insisted the scheme was still going ahead and that the trial of voluntary cards was even being expanded in north-west England.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: "This decision is symbolic of a government in chaos. They have spent millions on the scheme – the Home Secretary thinks it has been a waste and wants to scrap it, but the Prime Minister won't let him.

"So we end up with an absurd fudge instead. This is no way to run the country."

Tory leader David Cameron has already written to companies involved in the initial contracts for ID cards, warning them not to invest money in development as his administration will entirely scrap the scheme.

Mr Johnson insisted the climbdown was nothing to do with the £5 billion cost.

He also appeared to concede that the government "should not have allowed the perception to go around that this was a panacea" to tackle terrorism.

As chancellor, shortly before he became Prime Minister, Gordon Brown had said the identity scheme could "help us disrupt terrorists".

Yesterday, Mr Johnson told MPs: "Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for British citizens – just as it is now to obtain a passport.

"Accordingly I want the introduction of identity cards for all British citizens to be voluntary and I have therefore decided that identity cards issued to airside workers, planned initially at Manchester and London City airports later this year, should also be voluntary."

Mr Johnson said the cards would always be voluntary for British nationals. But foreign nationals who live in the UK would still be required to carry them.

He said the cards would help stop illegal working, people trafficking and identity fraud.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "This is another nail in the coffin for the government's illiberal ID cards policy, which will soon be so voluntary that only Home Office mandarins seeking promotion will have them.

"Airport workers did not want to be guinea pigs for this deeply unpopular scheme, now reduced to nothing more than a second-rate passport."

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said: "Alan Johnson has signalled the final stages of the descent into chaos of the government's ID card scheme.

"The abandonment of the requirement for the ID card to be compulsory as the final stage shows the government has lost its belief in the ID card as a universal check on identity.

"One of the fundamental design flaws in the system was that it had to be compulsory for it to work as advertised.

"Otherwise, how could any public servant, be they police, immigration officer, or welfare provider, demand to see it?"

Anyone wanting a card will pay £30 on top of the cost of having their biometric details taken. The estimated cost is more than £5bn over ten years.

Holders will be able to travel to other EU countries with just the card and no passport.

But civil liberties campaigners Liberty said anyone applying for a passport would still have to have their details stored on the national identity register and was still a form of compulsion.

Isabella Sankey, director of policy for Liberty, said: "The Home Secretary needs to be clear as to whether entry on to the National Identity Register will continue to be automatic when applying for a passport.

"If so, the identity scheme will be compulsory in practice."

SNP home affairs spokesman Pete Wishart pointed to how unworkable the government's policies appeared to be.

"Just a day after he ditched his unpopular and unworkable plans for the privatisation of Royal Mail, we have another massive climb down from the PM over ID cards," he said.

"Not only should he abandon this ludicrous and wasteful scheme in its entirety, Gordon Brown should stop gearing up for an election and call one."

The climbdown follows a series of recent policy reversals by Mr Brown, who marked his second anniversary as Prime Minister on Saturday.

Last week Business Secretary Lord Mandelson was forced to concede he could not get his proposal to sell off part of Royal Mail past Labour backbenchers.

On Monday, the government was forced to remove a clause from its much touted parliamentary standards bill to make the MPs' code of conduct legally binding.

Last week Mr Brown performed a U-turn over holding the Iraq inquiry largely in public after drawing fury from relatives of the war dead.

Background

IDENTITY cards were first mooted by the Tory government led by John Major but were quickly dropped.

The plan was resurrected by the Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett in 2001 and taken up with gusto by his predecessors.

A consultation paper seeking public opinion followed in 2002.

But objections were raised about the scheme by the Information Commissioner Richard Thomas and the former National Technology Officer of Microsoft, Jerry Fishenden, who warned in a Scotsman article that a database would be a honeypot for fraudsters.

Officially the Home Office has revealed it has spent £20 million on the scheme so far, but critics put the true cost is put above £50 million.

While the costs have risen, public support has fallen. A Home Office survey last year found that 60 per cent of the public supported the cards in August but this dropped to 55 per cent by November.

Government under fire over clean-up plan

MPs yesterday accused the government of acting with "indecent haste" in looking to pass a new law in three days to clean-up Westminster in the wake of the expenses scandal.

The move to establish an Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority would remove from Commons officials the role of deciding whether to pay expenses claims submitted by MPs. It would also deal with complaints made by the public and would pay MPs their salaries.

MPs would be forced to declare financial interests in a register and declare interests before speaking or voting.

On Monday night, Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who is piloting the measures through the Commons, was forced to withdraw a clause that would have made a new code of conduct legally binding for MPs, with the threat of up to one year's jail for those who broke the rules.

Commons officials had warned that it could be subject to legal challenges if members of the public did not believe it was tough enough, while MPs complained it could prevent them from speaking out in support of their constituents.

Yesterday Mr Straw admitted that the new laws may have to be rewritten before the end of the year if a wider review into MPs' expenses, being undertaken by Sir Christopher Kelly, the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, came back with proposals that were more far-reaching.

Senior Tory backbencher Sir Patrick Cormack appeared to speak for many MPs when he complained at the speed the government was pursuing the reforms.

Many MPs believe they should ultimately be answerable to their electorates at election time and not to a quango.

Sir Patrick said the government was taking a bill with "significant constitutional significance through the House at a gallop", adding that there were "widespread concerns in all parts of the House about what they are doing".