THE introduction of the controversial identity card scheme was in doubt last night after the Government admitted that the multimillion-pound project could be delayed.

The Home Office was unable to give a date for when the first cards would be issued. Under a timetable set out when legislation was passed this year, the first cards were supposed to appear in 2008.

However, the Home Office said that that was no longer a key date and that the timetable was secondary to making sure that the scheme could operate effectively.

A spokesman said: “We set a timetable for when ID cards would be introduced and that might change.” He disclosed that the planned introduction was now linked to a full-scale review of all Home Office operations ordered after John Reid took over as Home Secretary.

The spokesman said: “The timetable is very much secondary to the review the Home Secretary is carrying out. It is an incremental process and it will happen when the time is right.”

Tendering of contracts for the programme — which will require every adult in Britain to give fingerprint and iris scans — has been put off until at least the end of the year. The magazine Computer Weekly disclosed that such a delay meant that the scheme was highly unlikely to be running by 2008.

It also emerged that the project was likely to be simplified dramatically. Rather than all ten fingerprints and other “biometrics” being stored on a microchip, the slimmed-down card may have only a digital photograph, or possibly two fingerprints.

Nigel Seed, the project director at the Identity and Passport Service, said: “It is a sensible delay. What we do not want to do is go out the wrong way while the Home Office is still looking at the solution.”

The latest setback for the programme came days after leaked e-mails between the Home Office and Treasury officials suggested that ministers were “ignoring reality”. They also said that pressing ahead with a “botched” project could push back the introduction of ID cards for a generation. The project’s overall costs are put at £5.8 billion but no detailed costings have been given.

Tony Blair has said that ID cards are needed to tackle terror and illegal immigration, but the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives oppose the scheme.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “This admission of delay is the first outward sign of the chaos that is engulfing Tony Blair’s hare-brained ID card scheme.

“John Reid should now come clean. It is only a matter of time before he realises that plans for such a vast identity database are not only flawed in principle but unworkable in practice.”

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “This ID card project continues to crumble as doubts about its effectiveness, technology and cost pile up.

“It is becoming ever clearer, even from the Government’s own perspective, that they should abandon this expensive plastic poll tax which, far from improving our security, may well make it worse.”

Edgar Whitley, from the London School of Economics identity project, said: “It is clear that there are systemic problems within the Home Office that seriously undermine its ability to implement any form of identity management for the UK.”

Dr Whitley added: “The delays to the ID cards scheme announced today come as no surprise — our 300-page report last year warned the Government that its proposals were high-risk.”

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