ID CARDS APPROVED

By Monitor SHOULD it be a matter of praise or blame that the legislation to introduce identity cards in Britain has taken more than two years to get through Parliament? It was started by David Blunkett when he was at the Home Office and finally approved on Wednesday night when a government compromise on timing of the introduction enabled the House of Lords and the Conservatives in the Commons to drop their objections. The government is mostly to blame for linking passports and identity cards, so that one cannot not be obtained without the other, and for continuing to insist against all reason that the possession of an identity card would be voluntary, as promised in its election manifesto. The target date for the introduction of ID cards is now 2008 but that may well slip. In fact, despite its toruous progress through Parliament the now-completed legislative stage may in the end prove to have been the easiest part of the task. The ID/passport contract will be the largest public-sector project in western Europe and, given the abysmal record of this and previous governments with computer-based programmes it is dificult to be optimistic either about the timing or the efficiency of the outcome. The time has passed to discuss whether ID cards are an infringement of liberty. Britain will have them in due course and soon will take them for granted as citizens in so many other countries, including Spain, have done for years.