ID card scheme may be delayed

Leaked Whitehall e-mail correspondence between the senior officials responsible for the multi-billion-pound project suggest the UK`s ID card scheme may have to be delayed due to the amount of rethinking going on about identity management.

The leaked information was published by the Sunday Times on July 9. David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce, said the government is “rethinking” the entire scheme with an alternative “face-saving” compromise.

The Home Office said the 2008 launch date may change, following a review of the department ordered by the Home Secretary John Reid.

Mr Reid said the process of putting contracts to establish the scheme out to tender – which software suppliers expected in March – has been put back indefinitely. The latest news comes after leaked e-mails disclosed that civil servants had serious doubts about whether the scheme could be delivered.

A Home Office spokesman told the BBC: “We set a timetable for when ID cards would be introduced and that might change. That is dependent on the review that the home secretary is carrying out.”

He added: “We have always made clear that its introduction (ID cards) would be in stages – an incremental process. That remains the process.”

Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis said: “This ID card project continues to crumble as doubts about its effectiveness, technology and cost pile up.”

Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg said the admission of the delay was the “first outward sign of chaos that is engulfing Tony Blair`s harebrained ID card scheme”.

SNP spokesman Stewart Hosie MP said: “The government has failed to make a case for ID cards being able to combat crime, identity theft, terrorism, benefit fraud and unauthorised working.”

Phil Booth of campaign group N02ID said the Home Office was spending £63,000 per day of taxpayers` money to “come up with ever more elaborate excuses for this scheme”.

Furthermore, fresh evidence leaked to the Sunday Times this week has added to the crisis. The newspaper reported on July 23 that a 32-page ‘restricted’ document entitled Market Soundings says “the security systems protecting the card and national database could be infiltrated by criminal gangs involved in identity theft.”

The report contradicts recent public reassurances to MPs by Joan Ryan, the minister responsible for the ID cards, that the scheme is not facing any problems. The report says: “Recent indications show that the British public’s appetite for the ID card is declining. Association with the resulting programme may compromise a company’s public image.”