SUFFOLK'S Liberal Democrats have backed calls for government to abandon a bid to make people carry identity cards.Under government plans everyone over the age of 16 applying for a passport will have their details - including fingerprints, eye or facial scans - added to a National Identity register from this year.

SUFFOLK'S Liberal Democrats have backed calls for government to abandon a bid to make people carry identity cards.

Under government plans everyone over the age of 16 applying for a passport will have their details - including fingerprints, eye or facial scans - added to a National Identity register from this year.

The first identity cards will be issued to foreign nationals coming to work in the UK in 2008, and from 2010 the Identity and Passport Service will issue "significant volumes" of ID cards alongside British passports.

Lib Dems on Suffolk County Council are now calling on government to abandon plans to make people carry identity cards after Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg MP published figures showing that 37 million pieces of personal information on UK citizens were lost in 2007.

Cllr Andrew Cann, deputy leader of the Lib Dem group at Suffolk County Council, said: “The expensive identity cards scheme is based on the government storing large amounts of information about each one of us on a central database, but in 2007 the government stumbled from one data loss crisis to another.

“Ministers are in denial when they argue that the information will be safe and people's privacy will not be undermined.”

Ipswich is set to have its own identity card office in preparation for when new legislation takes hold next year, one of several in the East of England. It is not yet clear when the centre will open.

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