Nouslife: ID cards in parliament

24 November 2006

ID cards in parliament

Thanks to a SNP MP (Member for Dundee, East Stewart Hosie), the government are still being, rightly I think, hounded about their ID card proposals; all good points here.

The key home affairs issue, however, will be identity cards. I will not rehearse all the arguments about the Government's various failures to prove any of the stated justifications, but I want to speak briefly about the cost. Let us remember that the estimate of�5.4 billion is merely for the Home Office to issue the ID cards and passports. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Enfield, North (Joan Ryan) told me in response to a question:
"This does not include the cost falling to other organisations using ID cards to verify identities."—[ Official Report,7 November 2006; Vol. 451, c. 1372W.]
Therefore, it does not include the cost to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, local authorities, the police or the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and it includes no cost whatsoever to the private sector. She claimed in the same answer that the private sector might save upwards of �320 million a year because of the introduction of ID cards, but I am certain that the costs will outweigh that saving.

There are now 1 million point-of-sale systems in the UK. According to the Government's regulatory impact assessment, republished in the London School of Economics report on the identity project, there will be a cost of between �250 and �750 per scanner. Using a mid-point of �500, it would cost �500 million simply to have an ID card scanner at each point of sale. The LSE report went on to say that the cost of a reliable and robust system would be between �3,000 and �4,000 a unit, before the inclusion of the communications lines and the recurring costs of the proper software and licences. With the training, support, updates, maintenance and all the associated sundries, it is likely that the private sector cost, for an annual saving of �321 million, will be in excess of �3 billion or �4 billion over 10 years.

The Under-Secretary raised a variety of other issues. She suggested that the costs would be dependent on how any organisation did its checking. That is ludicrous, because the card must be checked against the central register. The person's biometric details must be scanned and checked against the register and the person must be checked against the card. Any break in that chain makes the whole thing utterly meaningless. The impression was given that there was a cheap and cheerful checking solution. There is not: there is either the full cost and the full check, or the whole system is pointless.