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AIA

ID card scheme heading for the bin

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10th Jun 2010
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Home secretary Theresa May this week promised “a Millennium Dome's worth of savings” during the second reading of the Identity Documents Bill that will bring the national ID card scheme to an end.

Once it gains Royal Assent, the bill will invalidate all cards within one month and erase all information held on the National Identity Register. The target date for abolition will be the end of August, but under the terms of the bill none of the 15,000 citizens who paid £30 to get an ID card will get a refund.

In seeing through one of the measures that featured in the manifesto of both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition partners, the Home Secretary characterised the ID card scheme as “intrusive and bullying, ineffective and expensive”.

Since it was introduced in July 2002, the ID scheme has run up costs of £4.5bn. The bill is “partly symbolic”, May said. “It sends a message that the Government is going to do business in a different way. We are the servants of the people and not their masters.”

The move will also save the government a significant chunk of its £6bn savings target. As the bill was being debated, two contracts relating to the ID card scheme were being negotiated for £650m and the government estimates that it will save a further £800m over the next 10 years by scrapping the scheme.

Officials are renegotiating two contracts worth £650m with companies who had agreed to deliver parts of the scheme. Some £250m was spent on developing the national ID programme over eight years and its abolition will mean the government will avoid spending a further £800m over a decade.

Shadow home secretary Alan Johnson said Labour would not vote against the Bill, as he accepted the mandate of the Government to abolish them. "We accept the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have mandate to abandon this measure," he said.

More more detailed coverage of ID cards, see our sister site PublicTechnology.net.

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