Home secretary drives through first-stage legislation to scrap ID cards

Plans will save £86m over four years and prevent £800m in ongoing costs

The intention is to get the bill through the Lords before Parliament breaks up for summer

Home secretary Theresa May has driven through the first stage of legislation scrapping ID cards on the first day Parliament engaged in normal business following the general election.

She warned it will cost £5m to undo the last Labour government's plans but save £86m over the next four years and prevent £800m in ongoing costs.

She attributed the cost to "termination of contracts, writing off equipment, contacting cardholders and others to inform them the project is over, exit costs for staff who cannot be redeployed elsewhere and payments to contractors for secure destruction of identity information".

She said she was acting swiftly to secure passage of the Identity Documents bill, which has passed its second reading or approval in principle stage and awaits detailed scrutiny.

Labour did not oppose the legislation, but bitterly attacked the coalition government for proceeding with it, and accepted a guillotine procedure to ensure it completes its passage through the Commons by 8 July.

The intention is to get it through the Lords before Parliament breaks up for the summer holidays.

May said 15,000 people who paid £30 each for cards will not be compensated and 60 temporary staff working on ID cards in Durham have been laid off. The cards will remain valid as travel documents in Europe for only a month after the bill becomes law.

The bill also terminates the role of the identity commissioner and re-enacts some provisions making it a crime to misuse other identity documents.

But 250,000 "biometric residency permits" which May said "were rolled into the ID scheme only because the Labour government was trying desperately to bolster it" will continue.

She also announced the government is halting work on "fingerprint passports" or second-generation biometric passports "because we believe in common with the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, that we can maintain the integrity of our passports by other security measures".

She claimed a combination of physical and electronic security features " already makes the British passport very hard to counterfeit and forge". But she said the government is considering strengthening the security features.

May said she was very pleased to be wielding the axe, that the cards were un-British and represented "the worst of government" and the government was making them "a footnote in history".

Former home secretary David Blunkett, among those primarily responsible for trying to introduce the cards, said they were now dead.

He produced his own during the debate and said he was proud of it. He said he had been offered a lot of money for it on eBay but would keep it for his grandchildren.

Shadow home secretary Alan Johnson attacked the bill but said his party would not vote against it since scrapping the cards was in both the Tory and Lib Dem election manifestos.