Government to sacrifice ID card bill
Michael White, David Hencke and Alan Travis
Tuesday March 15, 2005
The Guardian
The government is set to lose its controversial flagship bills on ID cards and the reform of Britain's gambling laws unless it can cut deals with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats before a widely expected May general election closes off all room for manoeuvre.
Though ministers seem resigned to losing former home secretary David Blunkett's pet project - a British ID card to counter fraud and terrorism - they will fight to save Tessa Jowell's gambling bill, if necessary by warning Liberal Democrats it is "all or nothing".
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With almost half the bills in last November's Queen Speech programme already at risk or effectively abandoned, government business managers are rapidly becoming dependent on compromises with the opposition parties to save what they can before the likely May 5 campaign starts in April.
Rumours swept Westminster that Tony Blair may try to wrong-foot Michael Howard's resurgent Tories by going to Buckingham Palace on April 1 but election experts insisted that he must call it during the following week, between April 4 and 7, if he is to avoid legislative meltdown.
After last week's cliffhanging drama to save the prevention of terrorism bill, a clutch of important measures are still at risk.
Business managers working for chief whip Hilary Armstrong and Peter Hain, the leader of the Commons, remain confident they can save most of them, though their Tory and Lib Dem counterparts are much more cautious.
"If the election is called much later than April 4 it could have a catastrophic impact on the way our bills work out," one official admitted yesterday.
Professor John Curtice of Strathclyde University yesterday confirmed internal House of Commons research that a May 5 election - widely assumed to be Mr Blair's date of choice - requires the election to be announced no later than April 11 to allow the legally required 17 working days between dissolution of parliament the same day and polling.
"But that would leave the prime minister virtually no time - just that day - to reach agreement with the opposition on how to deal with the outstanding business and push it through," Professor Curtice said.
With the short session's programme heavily backlogged, most would be lost. That points to a visit to the palace during the previous week, leaving peers and MPs a clear two or three days to go through what is sometimes called the "wash up" period when all sides agree on what to save or junk.
Another complication is the embattled civil marriage plans of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles at the Guildhall in Windsor on April 8.
Mr Blair might be able to rescue most of the threatened bills, not least because a vetoed bill can sometimes be used as a campaign weapon.
The Tories already believe Labour is cynically playing that card. That is denied. One senior Labour minister last night countered by suggesting that the "Soca" bill - to set up a British "FBI" to tackle serious organised crime - will get through, but that the ID card bill will be blocked.
"The Tories don't know where they are on the bill so the easiest thing to do would be to stop it," the minister said, a reference to Conservative flip-flops on the issue. They abstained on the third reading.
Though the pre-campaign has been gathering pace, Mr Blair still has all legal and political options open. Friends say he would prefer a June election but accepts that the May 5 local elections, unlikely to be good for Labour, is the logical moment to pick. Turnout will be more than usually important.
