By Andy McCue, 14 October 2005 11:55
NEWS The government has agreed to a cut-price, £30 standalone national ID card for the elderly and those on low incomes who do not have a passport.
The cut-price card will be available to those who choose not to hold a passport but will be valid as a travel document within the European Union.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the subsidised standalone 10-year ID card fits in with Home Office spending plans and current financial estimates of the ID cards scheme.
But the government still refuses to disclose how much it intends to charge the majority of the population for the combined biometric passport and ID card package that will be introduced from 2008.
The current Home Office "best estimate" for the average unit cost of producing the combined passport and ID card package is £93, whereas the London School of Economics claims the unit cost will be closer to £300.
In a written answer to a parliamentary question, Clarke also revealed the Home Office commissioned accountancy firm KPMG to carry out a review of the ID cards costing methodology.
KPMG has concluded the costing is "robust and appropriate" but recommended improvements to the sensitivity analysis and revisiting some of the cost assumptions. The Home Office says it plans to publish an executive summary of the KPMG report "in due course".
In a rallying call, before next Tuesday's crucial House of Commons vote on the Identity Cards Bill, Clarke said: "In future, the recording of biometrics, such as fingerprints, iris patterns or facial image means that we will have a much stronger way of linking identity to the person. A national ID card will be a robust, secure way to establish that identities are real, not fabricated."
The Home Office has already admitted to spending more than £20m on the ID card scheme before the bill has even been put on the Statute Book.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. Charles Smith
I can see that the National Identity Register will make some savings by reducing fraudulent benefit claims: you have to have a valid card for each person where you are claiming benefit. That will be a pain for illegal immigrants.
It will affect terrorists, if you can persuade them to carry a card you can learn their name. That might prevent imprisoning the wrong person.
However the costs are spiralling out of control, before the project even starts! It still puzzles me why, if there is a central National Register for cross reference why you need to spend more than a pound to print an identity card. The current project cost of the system seems to be close to £250 per person.
Take this approach - put the card in a internet attached reader and up pops the details and photo of the person from the central register, ditto for fingerprint in place of the card.
Hows this for an offer - if Mr Clark gives me a call I'll set it all up for £100 per head, provided I'm allowed to keep the change? The Government can spend their share of the savings on giving our troops bullet proof vests or whatever.
2. Karl Meyer
How will ID cards stop benefit fraud? Most fraud occurs when people don't claim "cash in hand" jobs or claim to have bad backs - Neither is going to be stopped by a piece of plastic.
Tourists spending less than 3 months in the country don't have to have an ID card so how will it stop terrorists popping over on EasyJet for a day trip to London?
The facial recognition system is so poor that it can't recognise you if you smile let alone have a haircut, change your glasses or get a tan (real or fake) - it also is poor for ethnic minorities (accordingto the official pilot reports)
Iris scanning won't work if you have cataracts, fingerprinting is particularly poor for manual workers (combination of abrasions/cuts to fingertips and chemical damage)
So basically the system is broken before it starts yet huge quantities of tax payer money will be poured away to no avail
3. Roger Huffadine
STUPID IDEA==£30 for the poor who will have to pay for it out of their meagre Social Security benefit, or will it be the case that they get a grant and the tax payer picks up the tab?
4. Ken Hall
Be debt free for only £30.00?
Actually this card will not prevent fraud or terrorism, because, as Mr Blunkett admitted, if a person presents false documentation (a false ID) to get an ID card, they will likely get a new, clean ID that they will have to live with. They will not be able to get another ID. This, Mr Blunkett Believes, will deter people form using a false ID to get an ID card, because (his logic states that) nobody would want to be stuck with a new, false identity!
SO let me posit this thesis: You know an individual who has gone thousands and thousands of pounds in debt, he gets a false ID to get a new ID card. instantly he is debt free! would he want to stick with this new identity or not?
The ID card will create a whole NEW form of fraud.
5. Frank Malaga, London
There will always be possibilities for terrorists to "fabricate" identities, since the same possibilities MUST exist for each country's own secret police agents...
The Questions is :
Why does a democratic government so desperately want to have a stronger way to link identity to all its citizens? (And in a way that Hitler and Stalin would have loved...), knowing it won't help against terrorism, and at such a high cost.
History has tought us that threats to the security of a population at times come from its own state (democracies are not eternal). An identity system like this makes the population EXTREMELY VULNERABLE in case of such a threat.
6. Jerome Pearce
So the warm-gearted government is going to let the down-trodden buy their wonderful card for a mere thirty quid, eh? Would ONE of the CHOOSE to spend this on the card rather than on essential (or even non-essentials such as fags and beer)? I think not.
Where is the public debate? Most of us seem to think it a silly waste of time at best, and an insipid threat to our potential freedom at worst.
All that and it can be easily proven that it won't combat identity theft, or benefit fraud to any significant extent, and it will definitely not prevent terrorism in any way - all the terrorists so far seem to be throwing their identity documents at us, apparently, so they are obviously not trying to be anyone else, and the UK variety seem to be home-grown in any case.
7. Karen Challinor
my mp was right behind the idea, and wouldn't even listen to arguments against it, he would just hand out the briefing notes he got from the house which make it all sound so innocuous
there was an MP in the house who tried to tell the rest of the house that Denmark had had ID cards for forty years, until he was informed that this was just a simple register similar to national insurance, at which point he backed down
but at the third reading and extremely limited debate there were still mp's in the house who had not yet read the bill and were basically there to vote yes regardless
how many ceo's would rubber stamp a decision that will cost their employees hundreds of pounds, most I am sure would at least try to understand the decision, apparently this is not the case with our mp's