The National Identity Register, the database which contains the biographic and biometric fingerprint data of card holders, will also be destroyed by the first piece of legislation introduced to Parliament by the coalition government.
The scheme was first proposed by Tony Blair's Labour administration in 2001 as a solution to identity theft, benefit fraud, crime and terrorism. The Identity Cards Act was passed in 2006. That Act will now be repealed by a new Identity Documents Bill.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: "The wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive ID card scheme represents everything that has been wrong with government in recent years. By taking swift action to scrap it, we are making it clear that this government won't sacrifice people's liberty for the sake of Ministers' pet projects."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties group Liberty, welcomed the announcements.
"We hope that scrapping ID cards for foreign nationals will soon follow," she said. "Passports and visas are appropriate for immigration control – ID cards are even more divisive when only one group in society is required to hold them.”
The Identity Documents Bill is part of a first wave of priority legislation set out in the Queen’s Speech on 25th May. It invalidates the identity card, meaning that holders will no longer be able to use them to prove their identity or as a travel document in Europe.
The Government aims to have the Bill pass through Parliament and enacted by the Parliamentary recess in August, in a move that it says will save the taxpayer around £86 million over the next four years once all cancellation costs are taken into account. It would also avoid around £800m of ongoing costs over the next 10 years which were to be recovered through fees, it said. It did not disclose the cost of cancelling existing contracts.
The Identity and Passport Service will inform customers, overseas governments, borders and airports of the change in law as soon as the Bill gains Royal Assent.
The role of the Identity Commissioner will also be terminated. The public panels, designed to scrutinise the identity cards scheme, have already been disbanded.
