The UK government are going ahead with the compulsory fingerprinting of passport applicants even without the cover of parliamentary "authority", which with the large Labour majority has been nothing more than a rubber stamp for the wishes of the executive, anyway.
"The home secretary Charles Clarke has authorised the passport service to acquire 70 new passport service offices across the country so that all adult applicants for new documents can be interviewed in person from next year. The service currently has seven offices.
The Home Office admits that the new network could also be used in future as identity card enrolment centres and the introduction of mandatory fingerprinting of passport applicants will form an important "building block" for the future ID card scheme."
So much for the election delaying the progress of the IS card white elephant. Well given the government have more people in the public services working on the non existant not yet approved ID card scheme that they have hi-tech crime unit police offices, I guess they didn't want all those civil servants to be at a loose end whilst the election campaign was going on. The Lib Dems have called the process an abuse of democracy.
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