...for the government that is. finally some of the country's law makers seem to have cottoned on to the implications of the scheme:-

Angry peers last night invoked the memory of fascist regimes which forced citizens to carry their papers as they tore the heart out of the Government's planned legislation for identity cards.

viscount bledisloe (not often you get a viscount as an ally!) said "One would be debarred from the freedom to travel around the world unless one 'chose' to go on some other government register". give the man a pat on the head. it seems it's taken this long for the powers that be to work out that making people sign up to the scheme when they renew their passports is compulsion for everyone except those who refuse to travel.

the peers voted to enable people to get biometric passports without going on the database, which still of course means that from next month all passport renewers will have to get a biometric passport, but at least you're not on the central registry of future offenders. they also voted for an ammendment requiring a separate act of parliament before id cards can be made compulsory.

we're certainly still a long way from being clear of the danger of id cards, however, as spy blog note:-

no doubt, the Home Office is hoping that a centralised biometric database could be used to control people even without a physical ID Card (which would make biometric matching quicker and easier). There is no guarantee that a future Government would not make the carrying of an existing ID Card compulsory.

no doubt even if the government is forced to make the scheme voluntary, propaganda of the "respect" type* could be used to swing the public's opinion in favour of making the database compulsory in future. you know, respect authority, respect your elders, if you've got nothing to hide you've got nothing to fear from your benign dictators, etc.

* check out one of the paragraph headings "reclaim the streets" for a great recuperation!