Charge Cards

I am pleased to say that the Home Office have replied to me again, this time putting the text of the reply inside the body of a plain text email — someone showing good sense there. This was from a member of the "ID Cards Programme Team" who gave an interesting response which was very close to what has been released to the media. No problem with that, I hadn't expected a detailed, personal response. I'm actually just happy to get a decent reply.

The crux of the matter is that the government have commissioned an organisation called KPMG (whose objectives, according to their website are "to turn knowledge into value for the benefit of our clients, our people and our capital markets" ... huh?) to conduct an independent study into the costing of the ID card scheme. The results are, funnily enough, that the government has got its figures right and everything is going to be peachy.

The costs being bandied about here are currently an annual amount of £584m for issuing passports and ID cards to UK nationals. That means that if every man, woman and child in the country renews their passport/ID card every 10 years it will cost them in the region of £100 each time, and as there is nothing like a 100% takeup of passports at the moment (it's about 77%) there is no reason to believe that will change, leaving something of a hole in the budgeting. The government is currently saying that the full passport/ID card will be £90, which pretty much tallies with that, but also that there will be a £30 ID card. If there is a serious take-up of the cheaper card (which may well be compulsory), will the cost of administration costs come down or will the missing money be found elsewhere?

To be honest, I'm not entirely convinced by the current figures. It reminds me of one of those "independent" studies launched by major software companies which prove that their products are definitely cheaper than free ones. Let's just sit back and watch the numbers increase over the next year or two. Or even better, not sit back at all.