Lords defeat ID cards again

But Home Secretary vows to push ahead with the government's plans for a national biometric scheme linked to passport renewal by 2008

The government's national biometric identity card plan continued its rocky progress though Parliament yesterday.

The legislation enabling the scheme has already been amended and passed once by the House of Lords and twice by the Commons.

Back in the Lords on Monday afternoon, peers voted to accept MPs' stipulations including the production of bi-annual cost reports by the Home Office.

But the Lords insisted by a vote of 227 to 166 that the government's plan to issue ID cards with all passport renewals from 2008 be scrapped because it violates the supposedly voluntary nature of the scheme.

In the last Commons vote on the bill in February MPs approved the government's measure on automatic registration on the central identity register for all passport renewals.

But speaking in the debate yesterday Conservative Baroness Anelay of St John's described the measure as 'compulsion by stealth'.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has vowed to fight to keep the plan as it is when it goes back to the House of Commons.