'Two-year delay' blow for ID card proposals

Published on Tuesday 22 January 2008 21:02

GORDON Brown's plans for identity cards were dealt a blow last night after leaked documents revealed the government plans to delay a national roll out of the scheme for at least two years.

Despite repeated assurances that the controversial scheme is on track, Home Office documents show that the cards will only be issued to UK citizens from 2012 – two years later than stated.

The cards were due to be issued to people renewing their passports from 2010 under plans set out two years ago.

They will not be compulsory for British citizens until 2015.

The revelation from documents relating to the "delivery strategy" will prove embarrassing for the Prime Minister, whose support for them has been questioned by opponents.

It also follows a string of privacy disasters and blunders with personal data, culminating in the revelation that the government lost 600,000 people's details when a Ministry of Defence laptop was stolen.

It is believed the Treasury will welcome the opportunity to drop the scheme, as some estimates have put the cost at up to 20 billion.

Conservatives seized on the leaked documents as evidence Mr Brown's policy is collapsing.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary said: "I should think this scheme is in the intensive care ward.

"There are clear faults in the whole government strategy as demonstrated from disc-gate to Birmingham-gate or whatever you want to call it.

"There is a clear fracture in public confidence. When we started there were 80 per cent for it. Now I suspect 80 per cent oppose it.

"It all amounts to giving the government an insoluble problem.

"It is a political nightmare for them which why there have been serial delays."

The Treasury has also kicked into the long grass publication of a separate business-led review into identity cards.

The Scotsman made repeated inquiries of the department last year, to find out when the verdict of the Public-Private Forum on Identity Management would be released.

The review is led by Sir James Crosby, and was due to report at Easter 2007. But according to parliamentary answers from Andy Burnham, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, "no date has been fixed for publication".

ID cards for foreign workers living in the UK will be issued from this year.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We do not comment on leaked documents."

The Scottish Government has said that it will not insist on making access to public services contingent on producing an identity card.