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The final price tag of setting up and running a national identity scheme in Britain will inflate, the government admitted in its latest costs report yesterday. Officials warned of an “overall increase” in the programme’s costs, seemingly because ID cards will be rolled out more gradually from 2009 and faster from 2012. But almost £1bn will be wiped from the £5.4bn budget by iris biometrics being excluded, in order to keep a cost-cutting promise by Jacqui Smith and keep the price of a card under £30. As a result, the scheme will rely solely on fingerprint and face biometrics - collected on the “open market”, a route that will save money but experts fear at the expense of security. “It is worrying that the only way that the government can still keep to its initial promise that an identity card will only cost £30 is by effectively excluding the biometric enrolment element from the scheme, “said Dr Edgar Whitley of the LSE: The envisioned savings of £975m by 2017, the year when all citizens are due to have an ID card, also derive from outsourcing much of the operation from Whitehall to companies. “In order to enrol fingerprint and photograph biometrics in the most convenient and cost-effective way, we now plan to provide this through the open market,” officials explained. In response, NO2ID said the move smacked of “creative accounting” but the Identity and Passport Service, the report’s authors, said they were acting on the independent advice of Sir James Crosby. NO2ID pointed out what it said was another U-turn on the government’s identity policy. “Ministers repeatedly asserted that ID registration would involve checking everyone individually and taking their fingerprints," the group said. "Dropping interrogations and fingerprinting for all may knock a billion off the latest fantasy figures, but it scraps even this fairy-tale notion of security.” And Dr Whitley reflected: “Presumably this means that grocery stores and post offices will be encouraged to set up biometric enrolment kiosks, with little financial gain to them unless the citizen is charged,” Dr Whitley said. “Ensuring adequate security in such environments will be challenging. Thus, while the headline costs of the scheme to the government go down, the costs and risks to the citizen rise. "This is not what parliament was led to expect and causes us to question how this version of the scheme will offer greater benefits than existing identity assurance measures.” Critics also attacked the cost analysis, which is due every six months, for being released two months late and notably after local elections. It states that ID cards will be deployed to foreign nationals from November, to workers in sensitive national security roles from next year and to young people “who want them” in 2010. In terms of overall expenditure, the technology required to run the scheme accounts for 16% – a one per cent increase since 2006, while product manufacturing/secure delivery accounts for almost half, from now until 2018. The set-up costs of the project are up 30%, specific costs relating to passports and ID cards have risen by 10% and the cost estimate for foreign nationals has risen by more than 65%. “Nearly £5bn of taxpayers’ money will be squandered on a scheme that will fail to combat identify fraud, illegal working, crime or terrorism,” said Chris Huhn, Shadow Home Secretary for the Liberal Democrats. He added: "This colossal waste of money should go on putting 10,000 more police on our streets instead.” May 8, 2008 Email this article Printer friendly page Previous Page
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