'LARGE SAVINGS BY CANCELLING UNWANTED ID CARDS' Politicians have spun the line that there won't be much money saved through cancelling ID cards, as most of the costs will be incurred against passports. There have even been rumours of '£200 passports'. It is basically a question of avoiding spending new money on a flawed scheme. Research company Kable has identified a minimum of £4.3 Billion savings over a ten year period. That's a lot of money to cash-strapped taxpayers There are at least five areas where taxpayers might save money if the scheme was cancelled: - terminals for reading ID cards to track us every time we visit the post office to license our car, NHS doctor's surgery, etc - the cost of operating over 60 'interrogation centres' across the UK. Until recently, the UK has coped with about 7 passport centres and managed any tricky cases by exception. The rest were brought in with the mass rollout of ID cards in mind. - the work in assigning say, 50 million people, a new NIR (National Identity Register) 'National ID number' and linking it with our records at government offices such as DVLA, DWP, etc. - the bureaucrats employed at our expense to look at opportunities for selling extracts from our personal data to commercial organisations. - and, as the government has refused to come clean on the overall costs of the ID scheme, there might be something like £12-£13 Billion in undisclosed costs that can be avoided. (LSE experts put the overall cost at nearer £18 Billion). |