UK News 21-12-2004 Rebels Slam ID Card Plans who: Michael Howard what: Undermined by mass abstentions from ID card vote where: House of Commons, LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "Government plans for national identity cards were approved by the Commons last night despite more than a quarter of MPs not voting," reveals today`s Telegraph. "Although Conservative and Labour rebels failed to derail the Identity Cards Bill, they provoked a highly embarrassing mass abstention." The Independent agrees, describing the vote - which was passed by 385 votes to 93 - as a "humiliation", "acutely embarrassing to Tony Blair and Michael Howard, who both pitched their personal authority behind the ID cards plans." Home secretary Charles Clarke had earlier branded his parliamentary opponents "Luddites" for their failure to recognise the benefits of ID card technology, but it emerged that far the disquiet in the commons was far greater than either party had feared. The Guardian, unsurprisingly, insists Michael Howard took the greater battering, having thrown his full weight behind the government`s plan. "10 Tories ignored his call - which split the shadow cabinet - to vote yes," writes political editor Michael White. "A further 72 MPs, almost half his parliamentary party, found constituency carol services to attend or other excuses not to vote." In all, there were between 170 and 180 abstentions from the vote to introduce the controversial cards, which are scheduled to be issued in 2008 along with "biometric passports" that will contain a fingerprint and iris scan. "The biometric passport scheme is expected to cost £415m a year, and the ID cards £85m," adds The Guardian, but Mr Clarke pointed out that the £5.5bn estimated cost "will be offset by money saved from curbing benefit fraud." Echoing the majority of detractors, Lib Dem spokesman Mark Oaten warned BBC News Online that the bill "is about a change in society where if you look like an illegal immigrant or a terrorist you can be stopped. Where you will have to turn up to centres to have your fingerprint or your iris scanned, where if you visit your GP or accident and emergency department you will have to put in a scan and prove who you are." [... more]

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