By Andy McCue, 17 January 2006 12:55
NEWS
The government's controversial ID card plans have suffered a major defeat in the House of Lords with peers refusing to approve the bill until a detailed cost breakdown of the scheme is made public.
The House of Lords voted 237 votes against 156 votes in favour of an amendment to the bill that would force ministers to reveal the full ID card costs to the National Audit Office for scrutiny, with MPs then voting again on the bill.
During the vote on Monday evening, the proposed ID cards legislation came under fierce and sustained attack from peers, who echoed concerns raised by silicon.com's ID Cards on Trial campaign over the massive costs and lack of transparency surrounding the scheme.
The Home Office claims the 10-year cost of the ID cards project will be £5.8bn but academics at the London School of Economics (LSE) estimate the real cost is nearer £19bn and that it could even spiral to £30bn.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil said: "There is a widespread anxiety in this House about the lack of information. We are dealing with a comprehensive system of surveillance and the idea government should get a blank cheque from us for it is odious."
Baroness Noakes argued: "This is about transparency and openness in government. I don't think the government has demonstrated that with this bill. There is still a disparity between what the government has put forward and the LSE. We asked other departments for costs and drew a blank. There are unanswered questions there."
The Earl of Erroll, who has a background in computer security and identity management, said the ID cards will provide no benefit to the citizen and joked that people would be more likely to use it to scrape the ice off their car windscreens in winter.
Peers rejected the government's claims that revealing the full costing of the scheme would make it harder to get a better deal from IT suppliers.
The government was also defeated on two other amendments. Peers voted in favour of a guarantee of a secure and reliable method of recording and storing personal information for the ID scheme and for an amendment stopping ID cards being required to access public services.
The House of Lords will consider further amendments to the Identity Cards Bill next week including taking out a key part of the legislation forcing people to register for an ID card when renewing driving licences and passports.
Home Office ministers have already vowed to fight the amendments when the bill comes back to the House of Commons and the legislation is now likely to get bogged down for several months as the amendments 'ping-pong' between peers and MPs.
Phil Booth, national co-ordinator of the No2ID campaign group, hailed it as the first significant victory in parliament for critics and opponents of the bill.
He told silicon.com: "This was a necessary victory. It's the first time the bill has received proper scrutiny. But I don't think the government are hiding the costs; I think they don't actually know them. They are really going to have to pull something out of the hat now."
Read recent commentary on the technology kinks that must be overcome in order to achieve a national implementation of ID cards.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Rob G
Well done to the Earl of Erroll for finally discovering a sensible use of ID cards.
2. Ian Kilpatrick
this is like watching a gambling addict getting another credit card. Here we have a government with a record of consistent failure to successfully implement major IT projects to time, to projected functionality or to cost.
Now they're planning a major project with the potential to fundamentally alter our civil liberties, without being prepared to reveal exactly what the project will do, who will be prevented from having access to our data (interestingly the DVLA has been selling data to known criminals!) and how much it will cost. Because of their arrogance on this we are dependant on the Lords and the press to excercise some control on their desire for both excess and secrecy.
3. Adam Finch
£19BN or even £30BN, that is frankly a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a ridiculous scheme to track and trace every UK citizen. Personally I don't want an ID card as it will strip away even more of our civil liberties and move the UK even closer to a complete totalitarian police state.
The fact that New Labour could even propose spending figures like that when people are still dying in disgustingly filthy hospitals, normally on a trolley-bed in a corridor while waiting months for a very inexpensive life-saving operation. Or maybe the plight of some of the poorer children living in squalid, disgusting conditions right here in the UK, should that take priority? I think so.
I could go on, there are probably a million other really good, useful humanitarian causes that could benefit from this money, but Labour seems hell bent on wasting it on this ID card scheme which will destroy our last remaining civil rights.
Fair play to the house of lords, thank goodness that they have finally made the right choice and thrown this idea out of the window. Hats off to them.
4. Simon
Now we see why they (New Labour) so wanted to destroy the House of Lords - they don't want people without a vested interest in getting re-elected asking awkward questions on our behalf.
Hopefully this major setback will encourage more people to fight ID Cards. Hopefully a few MPs will wake up and vote with a conciense instead of brown-nosing to try and get into the cabinet ! We already know that MPs are prone to change quite quickly once they smell blood - and this bill has been well and truly battered.
5. Jerrold Baldwin
I am grateful to the House of Lords for trying to protect us from this vile bill, both in terms of its cost and our liberty.
Despite having a majority of 67 seats in the House of Commons, less than 36% of the people who voted in the last election voted New Labour. Of course, this means that more than 64% of voters did not support the Government’s party. (Have New Labour been tinkering?)
Blair has absolutely no support from other parties for this bill. New Labour contains many MPs that are against it. Surely this makes the bill fairly un-democratic, and, given its nature, extremely authoritarian. Let’s hope that at least 64% of the Lords continue to vote against it.
6. All for REAL Democracy
Keep the Lords as a Commons 'Reality Check'.
For anyone considering abolishing the House of Lords, this should serve as a sanguine lesson that unless Parliament has a serious second house, the Commons MPs will run riot in this country with no platform for common sense to counter the Commons's lack of it.
Keep the Lords ...but elect them. Like the USA, we need one house with one elected official per x,000 head of the population, plus one house with two elected officials per county.
It's all about 'checks and balances'.
7. Nigel Perry
Well done, my Lords! Governments will take any opportunity to slip their horrid little plans past the unwary. Already you need to produce a photo-ID card just to replace a damaged number plate for your vehicle, even though you could hand in the old one. Don't let them get away with anything as sloppy as this.