The bill abolishing the National Identity Scheme is expected to gain royal assent on Tuesday.
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ID cards, National Identity Register scrapped
The Conservative-Lib Dem government has begun its term by confirming the imminent cancellation of Labour's identity card scheme and its underlying database
The Home Office said that it expected the Identity Documents Bill will pass into law. As a result, existing ID cards will be invalid for use in a month's time.
Home Office minister Damian Green said the bill's passing will also allow work to begin on the secure destruction of the National Identity Register. "Photographs, fingerprints and personal information that were submitted as part of the application process for an ID card will be destroyed within two months," he wrote in an article for The Guardian.
Green added that the freedom bill due early in 2011 is likely to outlaw the fingerprinting of children without parental consent, further regulate CCTV and change the rules on retaining people's DNA.
"These measures are only the start," he added. "In the following months and years, we will continue to act decisively to defend civil liberties while protecting the public. I hope we have put the era of ever increasing state intervention in our private lives behind us forever."
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