Peter Mandelson is telling half the oligarch story; ID cards will be next Labour deception
Philip Johnston, writing in the Daily Telegraph, analyses David Blunkett’s assertion that it is “economically illiterate” to suggest that savings would be made by abandoning plans for a national ID database:
In 1995, a 10-year adult passport cost £18. Today, it will set you back £72. When the passport is combined with an ID card, the standard fee will be at least £100.
That represents a five-fold increase over 14 years and suggests that a large share of the development costs of the ID scheme has already been absorbed in the passport, for which we pay so that will not fall on public funds.
But developing the database will – even if the Government has already pared back the cost by abandoning Mr Blunkett’s initial plan to collect “clean” information from scratch and will rely only on one biometric, the fingerprint, rather than a more secure one, the iris.
The Government says 70 per cent of the cost of the ID card would be spent in any case on the ePassport, but attempts to get a breakdown are resisted on the convenient grounds of commercial confidentiality. The financial waters are being muddied so we cannot work out the true price of Labour’s folly.
