News

July 2006
Home Office says ID card scheme will fail

This was reported in The Times who got hold of some leaked documents. These showed that top Home Office personnel believe the scheme is doomed to failure.

The e-mail correspondence was between Peter Smith, acting commercial director at the Identity and Passport Service, the Home Office agency set up to bring in the cards, and David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce, which is responsible for vetting the project to ensure that the Treasury gets value for taxpayers' money.

They reveal that the government is “rethinking” the entire scheme with an alternative “face-saving” compromise, which Smith blames on Blair. This “early variant” plan appears to involve collecting and storing biometric data on a temporary ID register but makes no mention of actually using it on cards. In one e-mail the prime minister is personally blamed for the fiasco with his proposal for a scaled-down or “early variant” version. “It was a Mr Blair apparently who wanted the ‘early variant' card. Not my idea,” writes a top Home Office civil servant.

However, for anyone concerned with the id card scheme and the national identity register, we still need to be aware that all the legislation is still in place and the political will to carry this out. Biometric passports are definitely coming in later this year.

You can find old stories from 2005 and beyond in the news archive.

 

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