As the UK's ID cards bill charges through Parliament, signs are starting to emerge that the Home Office's dubious packaging plans might be coming apart at the seams. Asked earlier this week to provide a timescale for the addition of fingerprints and iris scans to passports, Immigration Minister Des Browne said a decision had yet to be made, and seemed to leave scope for this never happening.

Slight scope - Europe is currently committed to the mandatory inclusion of facial and fingerprint biometrics on passports, and while dab-happy Britain isn't being allowed to play with that trainset directly, we're still very enthusiastic about it all.

By John Lettice at The Register.

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