MOST Britons will be forced to have an identity card within five years after MPs defeated the Lords last night, despite a Labour backbench rebellion.

Moves to require people to buy ID cards when they request or renew a British passport were carried by 310 votes to 279, a majority of 31.

The Government’s Commons majority was halved, but by recent standards the revolt was modest. The result spared Tony Blair embarrassment. The Prime Minister was again absent for a key division after the aircraft bringing him from South Africa was grounded.

Gordon Brown, with a big speech on security, and John Prescott, who stood in for Mr Blair at the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, appealed to MPs not to damage the Government, still smarting over losing last week’s Dunfermline by-election. The Chancellor spent three hours seeing Labour backbenchers to try to contain the rebellion.

The Commons reinstated the Government’s original plans for people to pay an estimated £93 for both documents when they request or renew a British passport from 2008. Critics say that the cost could be higher.

The Identity Cards Bill will now go back to the Lords, who had voted to decouple the issuing of ID cards from passports, blocking ministers’ plans to add millions of people to the identity register each year technically on a voluntary basis.

The Lords must decide whether to insist that passport applications stay separate from identity cards, amending the Bill again in a “ping-pong” with the Commons, or to give way, which is the more likely option.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, moved amendments overturning changes made to the Bill by peers, saying that the Government had made clear that it envisaged linking ID cards to passports as part of their phased introduction.

Applicants for residents’ permits and for visas from certain non-European Union countries and asylum-seekers would also be subject to compulsory registration of biometric data — fingerprints and iris scans — on the identity database.

Mr Clarke told MPs that certificates issued by the Criminal Records Bureau might in future be added to the list of designated documents requiring registration on the identity database, but Parliament would debate such a move first. Driving licences will not be conditional on having an ID card.

Under the Government’s plans, people will be free to apply for an ID card on their own initiative, at a cost estimated to be £30. But relatively few would be expected to, given that potential benefits such as guaranteeing entitlement to public services could apply only if cards became compulsory.

If ID cards are linked to passports, 48 million people will eventually have their details added to the national identity register; 12 million do not have a passport. Several Labour MPs unhappy at the plans intervened during Mr Clarke’s remarks. David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, opposed the plan to link passports with ID cards, saying that it amounted to “creeping compulsion”: people who had to travel abroad for work, family or other reasons would have no choice but to submit to the identity register.

David Blunkett, who had set out plans for identity cards when he was Home Secretary, defended the policy, saying that it would enable the Government to know who was in the country and who was entitled to work and services.

Alistair Carmichael, for the Liberal Democrats, gave warning that the move would create an “irresistible momentum” towards compulsion and accused ministers of breaching Labour’s manifesto commitment by linking passports with ID cards.

Earlier MPs approved without a vote a government concession that mandatory registration on the national identity database would require a separate Act of Parliament.

Ministers say that they would be unlikely to make ID cards compulsory until at least 2012, by which time at least one general election would have been held. In further votes, a move to compel individuals to get a card when they apply or renew a passport was backed by 310 votes to 259.

MPs agreed that the Home Secretary should appoint the Commissioner overseeing the register by 318 votes to 257. A move to make the register more secure and reliable was backed by 316 votes to 257.

REBEL FORCES

The following Labour MPs voted against the Government in the first vote yesterday:

Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington); Katy Clark (Ayrshire North and Arran); Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North); Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe & Nantwich); Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central); Paul Flynn (Newport West); Ian Gibson (Norwich North); Kate Hoey (Vauxhall); Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North); Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Highgate); Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak); John McDonnell (Hayes & Harlington); Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway); Linda Riordan (Halifax); Clare Short (Birmingham Ladywood); Alan Simpson (Nottingham South); John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan); David Taylor (Leicestershire North West); Robert Wareing (Liverpool West Derby); Mike Wood (Batley & Spen).

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