Leader: ID card vote shames IT industry

It wasn't a wholly unexpected outcome but, nevertheless, the narrow victory in the House of Commons for the government's controversial ID cards bill on Tuesday represents a new low point for UK democracy and the country's IT industry.

The bill scraped through by just 25 votes, largely on the back of a three-line whip to ensure that Labour MPs toed the party line and that Blair didn't suffer an embarrassing defeat on a flagship election manifesto policy.

As more than one MP pointed out during the debate, the ID card bill would have been put out of its misery long ago if it had been a free vote among MPs. Then again the whole ID cards scheme has been an exercise in spin and how to ride roughshod over the democratic process - including curtailing the time for parliamentary debate on the bill, and stacking the standing committee tasked with examining the proposed legislation with pro-ID-card MPs.

As Conservative Party MP Edward Garnier said during the ID cards debate on Tuesday evening: "The bill amounts to little more than a denial of democracy. The House should be ashamed of it."

If cowardly behaviour from MPs more concerned about their political career than the democratic process wasn't bad enough, it has been compounded by the blind greed of the IT industry, which is complicit in this whole sorry debacle.

Technology and cost issues have been at the heart of silicon.com's ID cards campaign but the UK IT industry, almost to a man, has remained silent except to tell the government how wonderful its proposals are in anticipation of getting a slice of contracts that are going to total anywhere from £6bn to £19bn.

We applaud those who have stuck their neck out - most notably Microsoft, which this week issued the starkest warning yet, saying no systems are 100 per cent secure and that storing so much personal information in one national identity register will lead to more fraud and ID theft.

Microsoft also criticised other IT firms and organisations for failing to make public their concerns about the scheme that they are talking about in private. Indeed silicon.com can tell much the same story. One biometrics supplier emailed us to say what a dog's dinner he thought the whole thing was - and then asked us not to name him as his company is involved in the project and hopes to bid for some of the ID cards work once it is passed into law.

Our only criticism would be that Microsoft left it too late in the day for these revelations to have any significant impact on the ID cards vote.

The government and bodies such as Intellect may have spent the last few years working to improve the procurement and delivery of public sector IT projects but their blind support for this white elephant threatens to undo all that good work and set the reputation of the IT industry back decades.