ID cards scheme "getting out of control"

The UK's identity cards scheme appears "out of control", according to a group of researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE), who are calling for an independent review of the project's figures.

Last week a government report revealed the ID cards scheme will cost more than £5.5bn to set up and run over the next 10 years.

But the LSE's Identity Project group - long-term critics of the ID cards scheme - has warned the government's report reveals "not a project that is progressing well but rather one that appears to be getting out of control, despite the best efforts of the Identity and Passport Service to minimise the risks and costs of the scheme".

For example the dropping of iris biometrics and reuse of existing government databases should have had a noticeable effect on the costs of the scheme but this is not the case, the LSE report claims.

The report said: "Either the radical redesign of the scheme has had no other effect on the costs of the scheme, or the previous estimates of costs were much higher than parliament had previously been told."

The LSE Identity Project estimates an annual operational cost of £600m for the ID cards scheme but projects only £150m per year will be made from registration fees, assuming five million enrolments per year at a cost of £30 per person.

Edgar Whitley, research co-ordinator at the LSE's Identity Project, told silicon.com this leaves a shortfall of £450m that could be covered by the charge the Home Office levies for formal verifications of identity - similar to the small charge credit card users pay to have their details verified online.

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A Home Office spokesman said with any cost estimates covering a 10-year forward period there are uncertainties and added that while anything new from the LSE's latest report will be considered, historic weaknesses have been found in the LSE's past assumptions and analysis of the costs of the scheme.

He added: "It is simply not true, though, to claim that the scheme is 'out of control'. Once in operation the scheme will essentially be self-financing through fee income."