THE estimated cost of national identity cards has continued to increase and is now heading towards £100 a time.

The Conservatives vowed to oppose the reintroduced legislation last night. Tony Blair may face the first big test of his reduced majority after David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that the Tories were hardening their stance because ministers had failed to meet their concerns.

The new Bill to introduce the identity card scheme showed that the minimum cost of running the system over a decade is now £5.8 billion.

Mr Davis said that the Government, having had six months to improve the Bill, had brought back virtually the same thing that was shelved before the election.

There were 22 Labour rebels at the last Commons vote and that figure could now rise. If 34 were to vote against, the Government’s majority would be wiped out.

The unit cost of producing the combined passport and identity card is now put at £93, compared with £88 in November.

Tony McNulty, the Immigration Minister, admitted as he unveiled the Identity Card Bill that the earlier figures had not been robust enough. But he refused to publish the overall costs on the ground of “commercial sensitivity”.

The latest Bill contains only minor changes to the plans dropped when the general election was called. Changes include more responsibilities for the watchdog overseeing the scheme and new checks on which government agencies can access ID card information.

It will be the first national identity card system for everyone over 16 since the end of identity cards after the Second World War.

As the Bill was published, the results of a pilot project to take fingerprints and a digital scan of the faces and irises of 10,000 volunteers were released. They showed that facial verification, which measures distance between a person’s features, was the least successful technology.

But John Cridland, of the CBI, welcomed the proposed scheme as a way of tackling identity theft which he said was costing cost an estimated £1.3 billion a year.

KEY POINTS

• National identity register containing details of every British citizen over 16
  
  
• It will not be compulsory to carry the card
  
  
• Register contains details of individual’s date and place of birth, address, previous residences, gender, full name and identifying physical characteristics
  
  
• The cards will use fingerprint, iris and facial recognition
  
  
• ID cards will automatically be issued in 2008 when people renew passports
  
  
• By about 2012-14, 80 per cent of the population will be covered. Parliament can then decide whether it should be compulsory for everyone to carry ID cards
  
  
• £1,000 fine will be levied for tampering with database
  
  
• Two-year jail term for possession of false identity document

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