The Cost of ID Cards.

As has been mentioned here before, the estimates of the costs of ID cards seem a little off. The Observer has got hold of the draft of a report from the LSE on what they calculate to be the true costs:

The government's plans to introduce identity cards were dealt a body blow last night after it emerged the true cost of the scheme could top £18 billion, more than triple the official estimate.

The figure has been calculated by experts at the London School of Economics, who have spent months producing one of the most authoritative analyses of the scheme.

Their findings, which will be published in the next two weeks, will be seized upon by critics of the current ID card bill working its way through parliament. It is likely to spark a backbench rebellion from Labour MPs and be taken up by the Tories and Liberal Democrats, who oppose the government's plans.

Last week the Home Office issued a report which estimated that, over the next decade, the cost of running the scheme, in conjunction with a new biometric passport system, would be £5.8bn. Because the Treasury has insisted the scheme must be self-financing, this works out at an average cost of £93 to each card holder.

But, according to the LSE's analysis, a draft section of which has been obtained by The Observer, the true cost of implementing and running the scheme, will be between £12bn and £18bn. This could make the average cost of a card as high as £300 to every adult, unless government departments are prepared to shoulder some of the financial burden.

We can’t acutally check these numbers for:

A spokesman for the Home Office said it was impossible to comment on the LSE's findings because of the confidential nature of the commercial contracts involved

Rolling around in the back of my mind is the Freedom of Information Act. It has certainly been used to uncover some aspects of commercial contracts (how parking enforcement companies are paid, for example) so there might be something of a coup there for an aspiring journalistic type: file an FOA request for those contracts.

But the basic and simple point stands out I think. The bastards are lying to us, again.