It was seen as too Big Brother, too expensive, and ultimately pointless, largely because it wouldn’t be obligatory. After spending billions (£10bn-£20bn according to the London School of Economics)  on the idea, the cards were scrapped.

Good riddance, many said at the time, but there’s a danger that in the hullabaloo over the problems of establishing initial ID and how ID cards wouldn’t stop terrorism, the baby was thrown out with the bath water.

According to new research from analyst firm Frost and Sullivan, universal multi-application cards are the next big thing in the electronic identification world and they could bring real benefits to users. At least as advertised, the next wave of cards isn’t about Checkpoint Charlie-style “show me your papers” security — it’s about access to services.

Russia (which admittedly doesn’t have the best track record on human rights and may not be the best example of state benevolence) is working on one of the most ambitious such projects, the Universal Electronic Card.

When it goes live next year, the card is expected to be adopted by 1,000 national and regional services and 10,000 commercial enterprises. Trebles all round.

With contact and contactless access, the card is designed to prove identity, act as a digital signature, carry medical insurance and pension information. All very useful for accessing state-run services, but if a card can perform half a dozen tricks, why not teach it a few more, too?

The UEC will also provide Oyster card-like access to public transport, act as a credit card to pay utility bills and buy goods online, and make appointments for the doctors. Oh and it’ll work for contactless payments, too.

In Europe, everyone was really surprised when the ID card scheme was scrapped in Britain

“The UEC project in Russia is the first one in Europe including all these verticals,” said Jean-Noel Georges, a researcher for Frost and Sullivan. “Except for the fact that this is not yet an electronic vote card, UEC is the most interesting and full-scale project undertaken in Europe at the moment.”

Obviously there are a thousand problems that would need to be sorted. What happens when you lose this “one card to rule them all”? How do you guarantee that someone applying for a card in the first place is who they say they are, and could all the disparate systems all talk to one card?

Would the public really believe that the Government, and corporate partners, could be trusted not to abuse their access so versatile a source of information? How long until the first epic data breach?

Real potential

Nonetheless, as someone who hates carrying around a bundle of ID and payments cards,  and somehow never has the right one in my back pocket, I see the potential.

For a start, it would end the ridiculous kerfuffle of taking a utility bill, a passport and a stool sample from the next door neighbour’s cat to the library just to get a new card. And as more services go online it will become critical to be able to identify and verify visitors to secure websites, both commercial and administrative.

There is an argument that some sort of access verifier is inevitable. “Eventually, the UK will have to have some form of online identifier in order to access government services,” said Georges. “It might be a password generator or USB security pass, but there will have to be something to let UK citizens access these services securely. In Europe, everyone was really surprised when the ID card scheme was scrapped in Britain.”

But will we ever get a scheme that works in the UK – a real widespread, joined-up, bullet-proof system that grants access to everything from our front doors to a dentist’s appointment’s book? Of course not.

Before you can say “biometrics”, the conspiracy theorists will be up in arms over government snoops and “function creep”, Guardian readers will be burning their muesli bars over the size of the contract offered to a big outsourcing company for the project and privacy campaigners will be running from forum to forum explaining how civil liberties will never be the same again.

Instead of a full ID system, we’ll probably end up with a half-way house solution that gives access to DirectGov and nothing else, yet still costs the same as a system that could simplify transactions in every walk of life.

The public can’t wait to get their hands on ID cards, apparently. Come 2012 we’ll have to carry them, but Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told the BBC today that she has people, “coming up to me and saying that they don’t want to wait that long.”

 Well, I’m in no hurry, personally. The longer I can keep my biometric data out of the Government’s hands, the longer I can keep it from being accidentally left on a bus, in a pub, stolen on a laptop or dropped somewhere en route by a courier. Never mind the privacy implications of having to hand over finger prints and a photograph to the Home Office, just to leave the country – can they be trusted to hang on to them?

 To me, it feels like the Labour party is urgently attempting to rush these cards into circulation in order to make it harder for the Conservatives to cancel the scheme when they come to power in 2010. Remember, Labour is the only party in favour of the scheme; the Conservatives have promised to cancel it, and the Lib Dems have called it a “laminated poll tax”.

And, even if you don’t mind handing over data, there’s the cost. Immigrants and airport workers are the first to have the cards foisted upon them, and they’ll have to pay £30 each for the privilege. It’s thought that just providing fingerprints and photographs for applications will become a £200 million industry.

 We won’t just have to pay to order one, though – we’ll be footing the bill for the infrastructure, too. More than £5 billion, at the last count. There’s a lot of profit to be had on a Government contract like that, but there are even murmurs that companies won’t want to be involved with it.

 ”What company is going embarrass itself to the tune of millions for a contract that everyone outside the Home Office itself knows will be cancelled by a new administration?” said Phil Booth, national coordinator of the NO2ID scheme, speaking to the BBC. Currently only a handful of companies are in the running, as we covered earlier this year.

 So, is Jacqui Smith telling the truth? Are we all squirming in our seats with excitement, waiting for our laminated, biometric ID cards – or are we all slightly miffed about the idea in general, and waiting instead for the cancellation of an over-priced, ill-conceived, expensive and pointless invasion of privacy? Let me know in the comments, I’m intrigued.