National ID card scheme 'will cost £18bn'

The cost of the government's proposed biometric national ID card scheme will more than treble to £18bn, according to a report by experts at the London School of Economics (LSE).

A regulatory impact assessment by the Home Office last year put the cost of the controversial ID card scheme at around £5.5bn over 10 years but the LSE study to be released later this week estimates the actual cost will work out at between £12bn and £18bn.

That would mean the cost of a biometric ID card rising from the current Home Office figure of £93 paid by each citizen to a cost of more than £300 per individual.

Among the factors the LSE claims the government has underestimated is the cost of the biometric card readers which will need to be installed to verify the ID cards.

The Home Office claims this will be between £250 and £700 per card reader but the LSE cites UK Passport Agency research, which found more expensive readers costing between £3,000 and £4,000 would be needed to cope with the level of detail the government is proposing to store on the cards.

Dr Gus Hosein, fellow at the LSE, told silicon.com the costs in the government's current ID card plans simply do not stack up.

"They are pretty much pulling them out of the air. We shouldn't trust the government's costing on any of this," he said.

Hosein also questioned the suitability of multiple biometric identifiers to be used in such a vast and complex project.

"There aren't any large-scale biometric ID schemes like this anywhere in the world. I don't think biometric technology was made to be done on this scale," he said.

The Home Office said it disagreed with the LSE figures but declined to reveal the cost of setting up the ID card scheme citing "reasons of commercial confidentiality".

A spokeswoman also declined to comment on why the government figures should be trusted when it had already revised the cost and purpose of the ID cards upwards three times from an initial £25 per card back in 2003 to the current figure of £93.

Click here for all silicon.com's recent ID card coverage.