One of the things that concerns me about ID cards is what the cost to the individual will be. Like it or not we live in an area of the country where wage rates are abysmally low - so how will the families with children be able to pay for the cards?
It is bad enough that the price of a passport has increased (from 4/10/2007) to £72.00 for an adult passport and £46.00 for a child's passport. I beleive this has been done so that the cost of the extra investigations for 'first time' passport applications can be funded.
Having just looked at the
Identity and Passport Service
it seems to assume that everyone will apply for an ID card when they either renew or apply for their first passport. I am sure I have read that less than 50% of the population ever apply for a passport, so rest of the population will be having to pay out for something they probably don't want.
Another worry is that all this personal information (for each individual) is stored in one place). Can you imagine what a field day there would be in idenity theft if the computer system's security was breached. They would have a complete list of all personal information for everyone. A very scary thought.