THE Government’s controversial identity card scheme is in jeopardy, with Whitehall officials accusing ministers of ignoring reality, according to leaked e-mails.

Officials are openly questioning whether the scheme can be tested and delivered by 2008 as promised. The e-mails also indicate that ministers are “rethinking” the scheme and that Tony Blair has plans for a “face- saving” compromise — an early variant or ID card lite — to meet the deadline.

Opposition parties and campaigners seized on the e-mails, which originated from an official close to the Treasury and leaked to The Sunday Times, as proof that the multimillion-pound project was in chaos.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “These are all the classic signs of a Whitehall IT project about to go disastrously wrong. These civil servants can see plainly what the Government refuses to accept. The Prime Minister’s obsession with this project will actually weaken our security and cost at least £20 billion.”

In one of the e-mails David Foord, the ID card project director at the Office of Government Commerce, says: ”This has all the inauspicious signs of a project continuing to be driven by an arbitrary end date rather than reality.” He doubts that the cards can by delivered in two years. “I conclude that we are setting ourselves up to fail.” Another official, Peter Smith, the acting commercial director at the Identity and Passport Service, says that the Home Office is working around the possibility that the scheme “gets canned”. The civil rights group Liberty urged the Government to “stop searching for a spin to save ID cards”.

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