May 1995 - Plans for an ID card are conceived when the Tories launch a green paper on identity cards. Tony Blair opposes the scheme and at the Labour Party Conference he says: “Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards as the Tory Right, that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local communities”

May 1997 - Labour’s election victory halts any progress plans for ID cards included in the Conservative Party manifesto.

September 2001 - Following 9/11 home secretary David Blunkett revives a proposal for ID cards, to be called ‘entitlement cards’ but is reportedly opposed by Cabinet colleagues.

February 2002 - Rising concerns about identity theft and the misuse of public services gives legs to proposals for the introduction of entitlement cards to be used to obtain social security services

3 July 2002 - The home office publishes a consultation paper, “Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud”

November 2003 - Proposals for a ‘British national identity card’ liked to a national identity database are included in the Queen’s Speech.

November 2004 - The Identity Cards Bill is included in the Queen’s Speech on 23 November and is introduced to the House of Commons on 29 November.

11 February 2005 - The third reading of the bill in the Commons is approved by 224 votes to 64. The Tories officially abstain. The election is called before the Bill can be debated in the Lords.

25 May 2005 - Labour introduces a new Identity Cards Bill, substantially the same as the previous Bill, on its electoral mandate.

August 2005 - Tony McNulty, minister in charge of the scheme, states that the government may have “oversold the advantages of identity cards,” during a private seminar for the Fabian Society

23 January 2006 - Having passed through the Commons and the Lords’ committee stage, the House of Lords defeats the government by backing a fully voluntary scheme.

30 March 2006 - After a journey back to the Commons the Bill receives Royal Assent, entering the statute book as the Identity Cards Act 2006

November 2008 - Non-European Union foreign nationals with permission to stay in the UK on the basis of a student visa or a marriage/civil partnership visa will, when applying to extend their stay, be required to apply for an ID card

June 2009 - A pilot scheme involving compulsory IDs for 30,000 air industry staff is cancelled after substantial opposition from unions.

October 2009 - A pilot scheme open to all residents of Greater Manchester begins.

November 2009 - A pilot scheme involving free, voluntary ID Cards for airside workers introduced but is later cancelled at Manchester and London City Airports.

27 May 2010 - The ID card dies, killed by the Con-Lib coalition and home secretary Theresa May in the Identity Documents Bill 2010. Among those who will miss it is John Kirby who told the BBC that he loves his identity card and would have paid £75 for it. Sorry John.