U.K. government’s ministers reveal doubts about feasibility of national biometric ID

Published 10 July 2006

The U.K. government has been pushing an ambitious agenda of equipping all of the 50 million adults in the United Kingdom with biometric national ID; questions about the feasibility of the project, its cost, and its real contribution to U.K. security persist, and leaked e-mails between cabinet ministers now show the questions about the program are rife not only on the opposition benches

The ambitious U.K. government’s plan to introduce a national biometric ID beginning in 2008 appears to be in deep trouble. E-mails leaked to the London Times suggest that a scaled-down, face-saving version of the program would be introduced instead, but civil servants say there is no evidence that even this compromise is “remotely feasible” and accuse ministers of “ignoring reality” by pressing ahead.

The project has been mired in problems from the start concerning its technical feasibility, contribution to U.K. security, and cost. Last year, for example, a study by researchers at the London School of Economics (LSE) found that the government’s estimate of £6 billion as the price tag for the project underestimated the real costs by a factor of three (the LSE study argued the cost would more likely be around £19 billion).

Problems in designing a workable system have already delayed putting out contracts to tender to private companies to build and manage the scheme until March 2007.

The government wants all of Britain’s adults to carry the cards with biometric data such as digitally encoded fingerprints or iris scans. The cards will be introduced voluntarily from 2008 but will likely become compulsory if Labour wins reelection in 2010. The Tories have already said that they would scrap the project if they are elected.