Lords reject ID cards proposals

Lords reject ID cards proposals Tuesday March 28, 10:19 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - The House of Lords again voted on Tuesday to reject government plans to introduce compulsory identity cards, raising the prospect of a marathon showdown between the Lords and Commons on Wednesday night.

A drawn-out parliamentary battle would be another embarrassment for Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has suffered a number of setbacks and rebellions against his proposals since last year's election.


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Parliament's upper house voted by 219 to 191 to back an amendment allowing people to opt out of the ID card scheme.
Their decision means the bill will go back to the Commons on Wednesday, when the government is likely to make further changes to its proposals in a bid to satisfy the Lords.

The last time this happened was in March last year, when the Lords dug in their heels over anti-terrorism proposals.

Then, the draft bill was batted back and forth between the two chambers of parliament for over 30 hours in an extraordinary game of parliamentary ping-pong.

The government said the Lords' latest amendment on ID cards, which would allow people to opt out of the scheme for now, would be costly and therefore unpopular with the public.

"We have now had a long debate and it is time to bring it to a conclusion," Home Office Minister Andy Burnham said in a statement after the vote.

"The fact is that this debate has now gone beyond the technical issues around the issuing of identity cards and is about a point of constitutional principle.

"For the health of parliamentary democracy, this matter now needs to be brought to a swift conclusion."

Blair's Labour government has had plans to introduce ID cards for some time. In its manifesto for last year's election it said it was committed to introducing them during this parliament, "initially on a voluntary basis".

Since then, it has proposed to link the scheme to passport applications. That means anyone who applies for a passport would automatically have their details added to the ID card database.

The Lords say that is a betrayal of Labour's promise to make the scheme voluntary and are pushing for a delay in the compulsory element of the scheme until 2011.