March to ID cards costing the public quarter of a million pounds a day
Tom Whitehead writes in the Daily Telegraph:
The Identity and Passport Service spent a £42 million on developing both the ID cards and biometric passport programmes in the six months since March this year.
That was equivalent of £229,508 every day – the highest amount of spending on the joint scheme so far.
In 2008/09, a total of £81.5 million was spent – the equivalent of £223,288 a day.
Between April 2003 and April 2006, a grand total of £41.1 million was spent – just £37,534 a day, although costs were always expected to rise as the programme expanded and began to roll out.
Both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have pledged to scrap ID cards if they win power next year.
