ID cards to be scrapped within 100 days
In the UK, that is:
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
The £4.5bn national identity card scheme is to be scrapped within 100 days, the home secretary, Theresa May, announced today.
The 15,000 identity cards already issued are to be cancelled without any refund of the £30 fee to holders within a month of the legislation reaching the statute book.
Abolishing the cards and associated register will be the first piece of legislation introduced to parliament by the new government. May said the identity documents bill will invalidate all existing cards.
The role of the identity commissioner, created in an effort to prevent data blunders and leaks, will be abolished.
The government said the move will save £86m over four years and avoid £800m in costs over the next 10 years that would have been raised by increased charges. An allied decision to cancel the next generation of biometric fingerprint passports will save a further £134m over four years. Savings to the public under the whole package will total £1bn…
A separate scheme under which identity cards are issued to all foreign nationals resident in Britain by 2015 run by the United Kingdom Border Agency is still to go ahead. Home Office ministers said yesterday this was a separate scheme for biometric residence permits for foreign nationals that was required by European Union legislation…
The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said: “The wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive ID card system represents everything that has been wrong with government in recent years.”
My personal politics – like many, especially those I hope who take the time to learn rather than listen – are a mixture of progressive goals, fiscal conservatism, a touch of libertarian individual protectivism and a thoroughgoing distrust of professional politicians.
My feelings about ID cards are as mixed. I welcome their use to protect electoral, social and welfare rights. I resent being treated as a statistic. I fear misuse and political abuse from reactionary and cowardly governments.
But, then our nation’s history is a wee bit different from those on the other side of the pond.
