True costs of ID cards

Letter: Re your article "ID card cost is up by £160" (May 7), I wish to correct the claim that the cost of delivering identity cards has increased.

Since the last cost report in November, we have actually seen a net decrease of £15 million to introduce the National Identity Scheme for British citizens in the period October 2008 to October 2018.

The figure of £4.95 billion in the current cost report represents a ten-year period, April 2009 to April 2019, when cards will be fully rolled out.

The last report was for the period October 2008 to October 2018, which includes a period when no cards would have been issued.

This figure includes the current costs of operating the passport service, the incremental costs of improving the integrity of the passport and the costs of identity cards over ten years.

It does not reflect the fee income which we will receive for both passports and identity cards.

To put that in context, passport fee income in 2008/9 was £349 million alone. So the great majority of costs are recovered from fees and there are limited opportunities to save money by abolishing identity cards.

James Hall, Chief Executive, Identity and Passport Service.