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Peter Black and South Wales West Liberal DemocratsRepresenting Aberavon, Bridgend, Gower, Neath, Ogmore, Port Talbot, and Swansea |
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Labour's ID sums don't add up - Black
November 13, 2007 12:00 AM
Neither Labour's sums nor their increasingly desperate justifications over ID Cards add up according to Welsh Liberal Democrat Social Justice Spokesperson Peter Black AM.
Mr Black was speaking in the light of the latest estimate of the likely cost of introducing ID cards produced by Labour in Westminster, which now stands at £5.75bn over 10 years, or around £93 per person for a combined card and biometric passport.
"Labour has yet to produce any convincing reasons for thrusting ID cards upon us all," said Mr Black. "Now it appears that they cannot even get the costs right. They admit that their latest £5.75bn figure has soared in the past six months by £840m."
"What is clear is that the price hikes are by no means over yet. Labour has conveniently 'lost' the £510m of Foreign Office costs that it included in its original estimate, published last October.
"In addition, there have been reports, principally from the London School of Economics, that Labour is persistently under-estimating the cost of the equipment needed to read the biometric data on their cards. The LSE suggest that the biometric scanners needed to read identity cards would not cost £250 to £750 per unit as Labour claim, but as much as £3,000 to £4,000.
"ID cards will not make us any safer; but they will make us both poorer and less free. The Madrid train bombers had valid ID cards. The 9/11 attackers had all their papers in order. Labour would do better to take the £5.75bn, or whatever the real figure turns out to be, and spend it on more police and intelligence officers."
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