CHARLES CLARKE will appeal to Labour rebels to back his controversial Identity Cards Bill tomorrow with a promise that prices will be capped to ensure all households can afford them.

The Home Secretary will tell MPs that it is too soon to make specific price guarantees but say that pensioners and people on low incomes would be offered cut-price deals for ID cards at about a third of their £93 unit cost. A Home Office source said: “We will give assurances that the cards will not be an immense cost to the individual. You cannot have a compulsory scheme if the cost to the individual is prohibitive.”

Mr Clarke will come under renewed pressure today to explain how expensive the ID card project will be when the London School of Economics publishes its assessment of the scheme. Academics are expected to say that the project could cost between £10 billion and £19 billion, depending on which specifications the Home Office chooses. The LSE experts are thought to have settled on an estimate of £14.5 billion, or about £220 per card.

Home Office officials said yesterday that they were sticking by their price projection of £5.8 billion over a decade, or £93 per card. They say that the introduction of new biometric passports costing about £70 each will effectively subsidise the cost of the ID card project. That would allow people who do not intend to travel, so only need an ID card, to pay a much lower price of about £30.

Whitehall sources have questioned whether the LSE worked on the basis that biometric data, which includes fingerprints and iris patterns, would last only five years, forcing people to buy a new card every five years. The Home Office is assuming the data, and the ID cards, will last for 10 years, like a UK passport.

The second reading of the Identity Cards Bill tomorrow is the first real test of Tony Blair’s authority since the election. About 20 Labour MPs have signed a motion opposing the Bill. But government whips are confident that many of the rebels will abstain rather than risk voting down a manifesto commitment so soon after the election. Downing Street has responded with anger to leading trade unions that have voiced opposition to the Bill.

Unison, the TGWU, the GMB and Aslef have all said that they are opposed to ID cards. Ian McCartney, the Labour Party chairman, pointed out that all the major unions had signed up to an agreement last year backing the proposals in the Warwick agreement, which also contained a package of new workplace rights.

Mr McCartney said: “The Warwick agreement is not pick and mix. Party members want to see Warwick implemented in full, including the introduction of identity cards. ID cards played a prominent part in the election campaign and were pledged in the manifesto, which was agreed unanimously by ministers, MPs, party members and trade unionists, and endorsed by the people in last month’s general election.”

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, has called ID cards “Labour’s poll tax”. Yesterday he pointed to a poll which showed that one in ten voters would back ID cards, were each adult to be charged £100. He said: “We always thought that support for ID cards would melt like snow in the sun when the public realised how much they would cost, the practical implications and the threat to security and civil liberties they would pose.”

Most Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will vote against, then take their campaign to the House of Lords where peers are certain to table a series of amendments which could radically alter the project.

Yesterday ministers rejected a suggestion that the Government would sell details stored on the supporting database to help meet the huge cost. Tony McNulty, the Immigration Minister, said: “The suggestion is complete and utter nonsense. The legislation will ensure that the ID cards database will be secure and confidential.”

However, he acknowledged that banks and other companies would be accredited as database users and able to refer to it for identification purposes.

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