Conservatives claim ID card delay

The £5.4 billion national identity card plan is being postponed until after the next election, the Conservative party claimed today, following high-profile data breaches from various government departments.

Previously, the Home Office stated the controversial programme would begin this year, with cards being issued to foreign nationals in the UK on an incremental basis. Cards for British citizens would be introduced from 2009.

But documents leaked to the Conservative party reportedly show that timescale being shifted, with cards not being rolled out to British citizens until 2012 - two years after Prime Minister Gordon Brown must call an election.

A spokesperson from the Identity and Passport Service said it did not comment on leaked documents, but stressed there would be no change to the rollout timeline. "We have always said that the Scheme will be rolled out incrementally. As stated in the Strategic Plan for the National Identity Scheme published in December 2006, we will begin issuing ID cards for foreign nationals this year, and the first ID cards for British citizens in 2009," the spokesperson said.

However, Home Office minister Tony McNulty told the BBC that although there were no changes to the identity card plans, the scheme still required approval from parliament before it becomes compulsory.

"We always said and will come back to the House (of Commons) when we're ready to in terms of any compulsion," he said. "So it's all voluntary at this stage, it remains on schedule but I'm clearly not going to comment on leaked documents."

The cards, which would require a national database, have come under fire from opposition leaders since the HM Revenue and Customs data breach last year. Recent scandals - including lost laptops from the Ministry of Defence - haven't helped.

"We have had so many disasters in recent months on the loss of data," Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis said. "The idea of putting all of our information, access to every single part of the government's information about you, and me and everybody else in the country in one place is so dangerous to our individual security, it's something they should shelve."

(Additional reporting from Reuters)

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