peter c, devizes, wessex. You have it dead right. The point is that life-saving drugs only benefit individuals, whereas if Labour outsource ID cards to the US, they just sign a cheque, and a "problem" is solved. They might even list it as an "achievement" at the next election.

jon livesey, Sunnyvale, CA/USA

£4.7 billion for an unworkable ID card system, and the loss of tax revenue if you abolished stamp duty would be about £2 billion - so scrap both and still have money to spare for a tax cut. Go on Gordon, show you are not a grasping thief who treats the taxpayer as a bottomless pit of funds!

Peter, London,

Ralph Small Likewise, but the point is that a forces ID card serves the specific purpose of controlling access to defence establishments. In joining the military you make a choice to have your liberty restricted. It is wrong for the government to extend those restictions to the general public.

Martin, Edinburgh, UK

so, we can't afford life saving kidney cancer drugs but we can afford to spend billions on ID cards, the which billions will be exported straight to America?- scuse me for being puzzled

peter c, devizes, wessex

It's a hoax and doesn't work in real life where such cloned passports are to be checked against CSCA and DS certificates.

Guy, Gent,

The elite have been working towards a cashless society for a long time now. The only way to achive this is to have an ID card, that has chip and pin enabled on it.

The goverment will have full control over you, they can disable you card at anytime and make life unlivable as you cant buy anything!

Andy, Durham, England

When this scheme was first aired I said then that there is no technology that cannot be copied or cloned no passport or ID card that could not be forged.
Do Labour and the idiots that think they know best get the message now?
Probably not .

Yachydda, Wrexham, Wales

Zanu-Labour laundering tax payers money ,to their buddies in the IT industry.
Whats new.

ronnie, bucks, UK

An ID system in itself is not a problem but Labours implementation and naivety is. Manual systems as used in Spain and elsewhere do not provide a one stop shop for ID theft. Labours high tech system provides just that, an easy way to rip off millions of records at no risk to the criminals.

Mike, Alicante, Spain

As an RAF officers son, and ex member of HM forces myself, then working within the defence industry, I have carried an ID card of one type or another for most of my life, I believe that we are the only country in the EU who do not have such a scheme, why not? It never harmed me.

Ralph Small, Nuneaton, Warwickshire

Quite apart from the fact that the whole idea is totally impracticable, it is an insane way to spend the country's money. Scrapping this futile project would release funds for a variety of things we actually want - decent pensions, properly maintained roads, good kit for the armed forces, perhaps?

Gill, Southampton, UK

Strange that the only people who seemed to recognise the vulnerability of the proposed system were those with a modicum of technological knowledge, and not the 'experts' being paid to develop and implement it. Self-interested blindness at work perhaps?

Bill Q, Derby,

Why would Labour be bothered about ID cards being cloned? They are the party of massive immigration, legal and illegal, the likes of which Britain has never seen before and they are not strangers to wasting immoral amounts of money. Look at their track record to see what they will decide to do

judy, Liverpool, England

I'm sure there are some quite good people working to develop these systems.

Similarly, I'm sure there are some really, really good people working to subvert them.

New Labour: Taking stupidity to the next level.

Brian Drury, London Colney, England

The better the security, the few times it will be compromised.

The few times it is compromised, the higher the value doing so.

The higher compromising it, the more effort is repaid the attempt.

The more effort spent on compromising it, the more times it will happen.

Supply and demand.

Nick Sharratt, Plymouth,