ID scheme: the truths, half-truths and deceptions

Geraint Bevan
RINF
July 1st, 2008

THE organisation NO2ID will not be represented officially inside the Home Office’s secretive ID consultation at the Barcelo Carlton Hotel in Edinburgh today. Despite repeated requests, officials have decided that my fellow campaigners and I are not “stakeholders” in the delivery of the glorious post-ID future. Shame.

To those people who have been invited to praise the ID scheme to high heaven and develop strategies for coercion, the Home Office has distributed information packs. These contain a mixture of truths, half-truths and outright deceptions.

Critics perpetuate myths, it is claimed, by suggesting that issuing each ID card will cost more than the pollster-approved sum of £30. The Home Office’s own estimate for the cost of the scheme over 10 years (the renewal period for an ID card) is £4.4bn. Divided by 40 million UK adults, that equates to a cost per card of more than £100 – but to say so is scaremongering, apparently. Never mind that the London School of Economics estimates the costs to the taxpayer may be five times higher still. Perhaps ministers are hoping that we won’t notice if the costs are taken from our taxes and increased bank charges (verification fees), instead of all being demanded as up-front payment when applying for passports.

…….full article here