Peers reject ID-card database plans as attack on freedom
Another good day in the Lords is widely reported. According to Nigel Morris and Ben Russell writing in The Independent:
Angry peers last night invoked the memory of fascist regimes which forced citizens to carry their papers as they tore the heart out of the Government’s planned legislation for identity cards.
The House of Lords overturned proposals to place everyone who applies for a new passport or driving licence on the database that will underpin the controversial scheme.
The “debate” was in fact completely one-sided:
Baroness Scotland of Asthal, the Home Office minister, had to listen to a succession of peers denounce plans to include all holders of biometric passports on the planned ID cards register. Not one peer spoke in favour of the plans. Ministers have always insisted the scheme was voluntary, but critics say it amounts to “compulsion by the back door”.
Baroness Scotland is reported as saying:
“We have always been clear that the identity cards scheme is being designed and is intended eventually to become a compulsory scheme for all UK residents and in this second phase of the scheme it will be a requirement to register with a civil penalty regime for failure to do so.”
However, crucially, she was unable to convince peers that the de-facto compulsion of linking ID cards to passports during the scheme’s first phase had been made clear in Labour’s election manifesto; the Conservatives therefore felt able to vote against it without breaking the Salisbury Convention. (The Liberal Democrats have said they do not feel bound by the Convention on the ID cards issue).
The victory is also reported in the Guardian, Telegraph, Mirror, Sun, Daily Mail and elsewhere.
