The Government faces an uphill struggle in trying to get their ID Cards bill passed and once again were faced with defeat in the Lords but the Home Office remains unbowed by their defeat and will fight on.
Ministers refused to back down last night in the face of a defeat in the House of Lords which threatens to block their bill to introduce ID cards until the scheme’s estimated costs have been independently vetted by the National Audit Office.
Tory, Liberal Democrat and crossbench peers joined forces to reject government claims that an ID card and passport, complete with hi-tech biometric identifiers, would cost £93 at current prices, with the card itself costing £30. The government was defeated by 237 votes to 156.
The Peers rejected the notion that set-up costs needed to be confidential.
But the Home Office minister, Lady Scotland, told peers she “simply did not accept that there should be any such unprecedented review of the estimated costs” before the bill passed.
It may well be unprecedented to have such a review of the costs but for such an unprecedented scheme such as the creation of a National Identity Register and the infrastructure to run it then I believe that parliament and the public really should be fully informed of every aspect of it.
They also suffered their second defeat when the Lords voted by 206 to 144 in demanding that the National Identity Register have a secure and reliable method of storing the personal data to be contained with in of every citizen.
I think this is the more serious point. Such a database as the National Identity Register that contains comprehensive data on virtually every adult in Britain will surely be a major target of identity thieves. It could be a disaster if the data contained within it was not securely held and access to the data restricted via a robust authorisation system.
