Eideard

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.

But, then our nation’s history is a wee bit different from those on the other side of the pond.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Alan Johnson signalled a significant reversal over the Government’s identity card policy…when he ruled out making them compulsory for British citizens.

The Home Secretary also abandoned plans for trials at two airports that would have required some staff and pilots to carry the cards and longer-term plans to make them compulsory for some railway station workers.

The announcement means that the only people for whom it will be compulsory to have an identity card will be foreign citizens. However, the Government is to press ahead with creating a national identity register that, from 2011-12, will include the details of everyone who applies for a passport…

The Government’s climbdown on one of its most controversial policies comes 24 hours after Gordon Brown announced a fresh legislative programme. The Tories have vowed that if elected they would abolish ID cards — at an estimated saving of £2 billion — while many Labour backbenchers are sympathetic to the arguments about the cost to civil liberties, as well to the Exchequer.

He added that British citizens would never be forced to have a card and admitted that the Government had allowed the perception to grow that the cards would be a “panacea” that would stop terrorism. Legislation to require some workers at Manchester and London City airports to have an identity card will be withdrawn, less than two months after it was put before Parliament. The schemes for new workers wishing to go airside at the airports will now be voluntary.

Idiots. I don’t support the position of quasi-religious libertarians that ID cards are the ultimate limitation of personal freedom; but, the history of British bureaucrats abusing their positions – and civil law – for political gain would qualify them for Congress or even the Pentagon.

Why would anyone trust them with the info required?