THE Government faces a close Commons vote in ten days’ time over its plans to introduce identity cards, the first of probably many such tests in this Parliament. The second reading of the Bill will be on June 28. The Bill went though all its Commons stages over the winter, though it had only begun its passage through the Lords when the election was called, so it was lost. A total of twenty-six Labour MPs voted against either the second or third reading of the Bill, though six are no longer in the Commons. The second reading rebellion was only the nineteenth largest in the last Parliament.

This scale of revolt is not nearly enough to defeat the Bill, since Labour now has a Commons majority of 68 (which could come down one with the expected election of Sir Patrick Cormack next Thursday). But the real majority is five higher, since the Sinn Fein MPs do not take their seats.

The arithmetic depends on various factors: whether all the other opposition MPs (notably from Northern Ireland) turn up and whether some Tories abstain. On the Labour side, the previous rebels may be joined by some of the new intake (unlikely to be many so early in the Parliament on a specific manifesto pledge) or by some of the 27 MPs who signed a Commons motion hostile to ID cards but did not vote against the Bill and who are still in the Commons. But several have changed their minds and some are now ministers or whips.

Consequently, Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart, of Nottingham University, the leading monitors of Commons rebellions, recently concluded that “unless there is a surge of new rebels from somewhere, it is difficult to see the ID card revolt presenting too much of a threat to the Government’s majority”.

However, Mr Cowley now adds a caveat because the debate over the Bill has shifted from being primarily about civil liberties to focusing also on the cost of the card.

This follows reports by a London School of Economics group that the cards could cost as much as £300 a person. This figure was described by Charles Clarke yesterday as completely wrong and as a scare story. It compares with the £93 unit cost estimated by the Government.

Part of the problem is that the basis of the estimates varies considerably. Will the scheme be self-financing? Will individuals bear the whole cost of the cards, or will some come from taxpayers? Moreover, some of the costs of bringing in ID cards will anyway have to be incurred by the Passport Service as a result of the introduction of biometric data on passports. There is also a distinction between initial set-up costs and operating costs over a ten-year period.

Mr Clarke will have to offer reassurance about the cost of cards to convince doubters that the scheme is worth the trouble. So the vote could be pretty tight, and the majority could be in single figures. This would produce lots of stories about the Government’s authority under challenge. The ID cards row is, however, merely a foretaste on battles, and small majorities, to come later in the session on legislation allowing new schools to be set up and on terrorism. The post-election honeymoon is about to end.

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