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Not only was it a convenient time for the Government to release the news of the spiralling cost of the ID Card Scheme (The day of the Prime Ministers resignation) they also attempted to "Spin" the true cost. Luckily, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Clegg, and his team uncovered the true cost of the scheme by scrutinising the ID Card Cost Report - as the extract from the article below, published on Home Office Watch, shows:
Over the next 10 years, ID cards will cost £5.55bn. That’s up from an estimate of £5.4bn six months ago - but they also reveal today that, whoops, they got the numbers wrong in October and at that point the cost was just £4.9bn. So that’s a 13% cost increase, an extra £640m in total, pushing the total cost of an ID card for Joe Citizen to over £100.
And the icing on the cake?
The Home Office has been spinning all day that the costs are really only £5.3bn. If you read the full cost report, this is the cost noted in table 3, which is something along the lines of “how much ID cards would have cost last October, if changes we’ve made to the scheme since then had been incorporated”. Also known as “a completely pointless piece of information we’ve included to make things look less bad.”
Over the next 10 years, ID cards will cost £5.55bn. That’s up from an estimate of £5.4bn six months ago - but they also reveal today that, whoops, they got the numbers wrong in October and at that point the cost was just £4.9bn. So that’s a 13% cost increase, an extra £640m in total, pushing the total cost of an ID card for Joe Citizen to over £100.
And the icing on the cake?
The Home Office has been spinning all day that the costs are really only £5.3bn. If you read the full cost report, this is the cost noted in table 3, which is something along the lines of “how much ID cards would have cost last October, if changes we’ve made to the scheme since then had been incorporated”. Also known as “a completely pointless piece of information we’ve included to make things look less bad.”
Since the Advertising Standards Authority have ruled that the following advert is not offensive to the Prime Minister, I thought it fitting to publish it here. In a lighthearted approach to the whole ID Card fiasco.
-Richie Northcote
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