Does anyone know how much David Blunkett’s ID cards are going to cost? No. Doesn’t look like it. There are no costs in the draft bill (PDF) and only some misleading estimates of how much you’ll have to pay for a biometric passport and driving license on the otherwise excellent Home Office ID cards page. So, in the absence of any idea what it will cost us to get to perfect, compulsory, irrefutable ID, we can only wonder what we could achieve if we spent the same amount on cheaper, low-tech programmes to boost social cohesion, trust, transparency and education. I wrote about this in today’s Guardian.
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Blunkett couldn’t care less about the I.D. cards; it’s the biometric database behind them that he’s really after. That’s why it won’t be compulsory to carry the cards… Who needs a card when you’ve got an iris?
If Blunkett were honest about this, he could forego the cost of the cards altogether. But the cards will no doubt help pay for the database. Clever or what?