ID cards to cost £5.4 billion
Monday, 9 October 2006 12:00 AM
The national ID card programme will cost taxpayers £5.4 billion over the next ten years, the government has announced.
The Home Office today published its first official estimate of the cost of the identity card scheme, which includes set-up and running costs over the next decade.
It is broadly similar to the figure given by ministers last May, when they said rolling out biometric ID cards would cost £5.8 billion over ten years. However, it is far short of the £19 billion estimate offered by the London School of Economics (LSE) last year.
Today's estimate comes as part of the first of the six-month cost updates that the government must give to parliament under the terms of the identity cards bill.
It was one of the concessions ministers had to make to get the highly controversial legislation - which both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have now promised to repeal - through parliament earlier this year.
However, shadow home secretary David Davis said the government had an "absolutely appalling record" for delivering IT-based projects on time and on budget, adding: "In any event ID cards will do nothing to increase our security and in fact may make it worse."
Lib Dem home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg also expressed scepticism about the government's figures, saying it was "difficult to believe" anything it said "given that in the past they have either tried to hide the costs or spectacularly underestimated them".
"Given the government's abysmal record on IT projects, such as the massive cost overruns on the NHS computer system, the public has every right to maintain a healthy scepticism about this figure. Identity cards will be expensive and unworkable," he said.
Speaking to the IPPR this morning, Home Office minister Liam Byrne stressed the benefits of ID cards and confirmed that despite reported delays, the first biometric ID cards for foreign nationals would be issued from 2008.
He said: "ID cards will give us a powerful tool to combat identity fraud which underpins organised crime, terrorism and abuse of the immigration system.
"ID cards will also help transform the delivery of public services to the citizen, making interactions swifter, more reliable and more secure and helping to reduce costs by eliminating wasteful duplication of effort."
But shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "The truth is, if ministers were serious about combating illegal immigration they would answer our call to establish a dedicated UK border police force, not waste nearly £20 billion on this plastic poll tax."
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