12 Comments

• olly 21st Dec '10 - 10:34pm

  Mark – I know it’s your job to try and sound positive and rally the troops but you increasingly remind me of the band playing on the Titanic as the great ship sank. Please don’t take offense, it just increasingly make me smile.

• Patrick Smith 21st Dec '10 - 10:58pm

  The scrapping of ID Cards is one clear civil liberties agenda policy that helps to vindicate the cynics that going into a `Coalition Agreement’ was not in the national interest.

• MT 21st Dec '10 - 11:20pm

  A policy Labour created that made me join the Liberal Democrats. Glad to see ID cards gone.

• Cuse 21st Dec '10 - 11:22pm

  How can you scrap something that didn’t get beyond a tiny pilot scheme?

  I agree with Olly on this Mark…

• It doesn't add up... 21st Dec '10 - 11:51pm

  Excellent news indeed. In former times, the news might have been relayed by cable or telegraph. Let us hope that Telegraph and Cable give it a mention.

• Andrew Suffield 22nd Dec '10 - 12:03am

  How can you scrap something that didn’t get beyond a tiny pilot scheme?

  With a great deal of enthusiasm and at the ideal time. Things like this should always be scrapped before getting beyond that point.

• Chris Squire 22nd Dec '10 - 12:31am

  This how it’s scrapped:

  ‘Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans): I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that Her Majesty has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
  Consolidated Fund Act 2010
  Identity Documents Act 2010
  Loans to Ireland Act 2010.
  7.48 pm: House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).’

  Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Olly.

• Anthony 22nd Dec '10 - 9:35am

  I have never seen the ID card issue as being a one party issue, plenty of Labour supporters opposed this and will welcome the scrapping of the scheme, so it is good news and should be getting wider coverage.

• David 22nd Dec '10 - 11:21am

  @Patrick – a majority Tory Government would have scrapped ID cards. No Lib Dem influence here whastoever.

• Tim Hardy 22nd Dec '10 - 2:29pm

  Good god, people, this is great news whatever party gets your vote.

  I’m livid with the Lib Dems for their behaviour over tuition fees but I’m not going to scorn them when they have a hand in achieving something good. Nor for that matter am I going to dismiss something because the Conservatives would have backed it.

  Well done to everyone who got this ridiculous, illiberal, expensive idea scrapped.

• Nick (not Clegg) 22nd Dec '10 - 10:13pm

  The scrapping of ID cards is good news. But it’s not a vindication of the LibDems’ decision to go into coalition. It was Tory policy too, so it would have happened whether you (I won’t say “we” ; I’m proud to say that I wqs one of those who voted against the motion at the Birmingham Conference) had gone into Cameron’s pocket (sorry, government) or not. Even with a Tory minority government, it would have secured a large majority in the current House of Commons.

• Dave Page 24th Dec '10 - 10:19am

  I joined the Lib Dems and No2ID to oppose Labour’s National Identity Scheme, and have never been prouder of the hours I’ve put in supporting both. The Liberal Democrats have been the only party to oppose the NIS from the start, and while the Tories’ belated conversion to the cause is welcome, I doubt it would have happened without pressure within Parliament from the Lib Dems, or without from No2ID, Liberty et al.

  The NIS was more than just a “pilot scheme”. Contracts were in place for the development of the largest, most intrusive system of state-owned databases outside of China, a tracking system which would have been illegal in Germany (a country which has learned the merits of keeping information from the Government), and coercion of the entire UK population onto it. 30,000 cards were issued, including to airport workers whose management was still claiming they were mandatory long after that requirement was dropped.

  However, as No2ID point out, not only does the Identity Documents Act have problems of its own, but the Coalition are violating their own Agreement to put patients in charge of their own medical information, by continuing with the NHS Summary Care Records system. No2ID are an ongoing and active campaign, continuing to fight in our best interests, and I encourage every LDV reader to support them.