CHARLES CLARKE overcame his first test in the Commons as Home Secretary last night as he steered the Government’s plans for identity cards past opposition from both the Labour and Tory back benches.

The Identity Cards Bill was given a second reading by 385 votes to 93 after Mr Clarke earlier branded opponents of the plan “Luddites” and argued that he had a duty to use technology to protect citizens.

In a combative Commons performance, the new Home Secretary confronted head-on the doubts of a succession of Labour backbenchers to plans for biometric identity cards.

He was challenged by Kate Hoey, the Labour MP for Vauxhall, to rule out a role for Capita — the support services company involved in several controversial public computer contracts — in creating a national identity database.

But Mr Clarke told her bluntly: “There is a Luddite tendency in this House that says we should have no IT projects because there have been mistakes in the past. That is a legitimate position to take but it is not one I am able to support. There are large numbers of areas where the use of technology should be a major asset.”

Mr Clarke told MPs that he was not prepared to exclude any bidder from the process.

Mr Clarke further denied claims from MPs of all parties that a national identity database amounted to a fundamental increase in the power of the State over the citizen.

Bill Cash, the Tory MP for Stone who disagreed with his own party’s backing for the Bill, brandished a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 as he argued that it represented a sea change in the relationship between the individual and the State.

Twice Mr Clarke compared the proposed national identity register to the introduction in 1837 of the requirement to register the birth of every child in England and Wales.

MPs pressed him to explain how identity cards would help to combat terrorism when they had not prevented the Madrid train bombings this year.

Mr Clarke said: “It is clearly the opinion of the police and all the other security services that this Bill will make the identification of people easier and that is why we support it.”

Others, such as the Tory MP Francis Maude, pressed him to say how the supposed benefits of an identity card scheme could apply unless it became a legal requirement to carry a card at all times. The Home Secretary admitted that the Bill could indeed lead to a compulsory identity card scheme, if Parliament approved, but said that it did not create police powers to require people to identify themselves.

Although the Conservative front bench supported the Bill, there were rebel motions opposing its second reading from six Tory MPs led by the former Cabinet minister Douglas Hogg and by 15 left-wing Labour MPs, including Clare Short. Instead, the Tories tabled a separate motion calling for the Bill to be referred to a joint committee of MPs and peers rather than a standing committee of MPs. Under a timetable motion, its committee stage will finish on January 27, two and a half weeks after the Commons returned form the Christmas recess.

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