Papers please
MPs rejected changes made by the House of Lords to the ID bill again last night in a move which essentially ends this chapter of opposition to ID cards. The Lords had attempted to prevent the cards from becoming compulsory without an additional act of parliament. The removal of the ammendments was passed by 310 to 277. Charles Clarke stuck to his claim that by only forcing the ID cards on people when they were issued with a passport the cards were still essentially voluntary as the passport is voluntary. Full compulsion will almost inevitably follow at some point making this something of a moot point.
With political methods of opposition to the scheme now essentially closed the focus moves to grass roots campaigns such as NO2ID. 12000 people have signed a pledge stating that they will refuse to carry an ID card. Sadly I fear that this will make little impact when most of the country will quietly accept the new bit of plastic that comes with their next passport.
So what does this mean? In the short term we can expect to see the government’s IT suppliers lining their pockets with more of our money. Mid-term look forward to a scandal about overspending (EDS - I’m looking at you here) and a dubious claim from the home office press department that ID cards prevented a terrorist incident. For all my doom and gloom the long term effects are less clear but I’m quite happy to record for posterity my belief that ID cards will make us less free. Doubleplus ungood.