15 Oct 2009
The Home Office is offering its own staff the chance to be among the first people in the UK to have an identity card.
Borders and immigration minister Phil Woolas issued a statement today announcing the move, which will also apply to others engaged in work related to the issue of ID cards.
Later this year, residents of Greater Manchester and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports will also be offered the opportunity to purchase ID cards.
But the decision to offer ID cards to civil servants has come under fire from the Tories.
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said the proposals "would be funny if it was not so expensive for the taxpayer".
"The government is reduced to selling ID cards to its own staff in a desperate bid to prove that someone, somewhere, thinks that they would benefit from the ID card scheme,” he said.
"This beggars belief."
The Home Office has estimated the 10-year cost of ID cards has risen to nearly £5bn. Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have said they would scrap the scheme if they came to power at the next election.
The government started out convinced that everyone wanted ID cards and they would sell themselves. As details of a poorly designed system with no obvious benefits started to emerge the public reacted negatively. Attempts were made to use airport workers as a control group, but abandoned as soon as strikes were threatened. Then it was proposed to aim the cards at students and young people (it was suggested at one point that undergraduates would not get grants without a card). A barrage of negative publicity ensued. The student bodies rejected the concept of ID cards in no uncertain terms. Civil servants will mark the third attempt to recruit a control group. I am sure they are just as enthusiastic about ID cards as the airport workers and students. None of this really matters, as the next government will axe the whole scheme anyway. It is deeply unpopular, even in the Labour Party.
Posted by: Simon Evans 16 Oct 2009
Can't understand why it 'beggars belief'. Stepping away from the politics of ID cards, this is entirely what you'd expect to happen with a new product. Large-scale testing on a control group to identify any last-minute glitches before going public on it. What would the alternative be? Not testing it presumably.
Posted by: Diocletian 15 Oct 2009
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