Meg Hillier MP, Minister for Identity, was right when she said, “Whenever identity cards are mentioned it's always been with the word ‘controversial’.”

But while the scheme began by being controversial on the issue of civil liberties, the focus of debate has now shifted. Critics simply want to know what the point of ID cards is.

The Identity and Passport Service, the body in charge of identity cards and the national identity database, has done itself few favours in answering this question with its shaky use of statistics.

After searching extensively, nowhere (that I could see) on the IPS website or the other usual sources of government data are there any statistics about the uptake, the costs or the strategy for rolling out ID cards nationally.

The conspiracy theorists may be taking things too far when they claim the whole project is part of a wider plot to create a Big Brother state, but the IPS certainly doesn’t seem to be helping its case. Most of the statistics that do exist seem to filter out from the media after ministers and IPS staff have given speeches and interviews or answered Parliamentary questions on the subject.

On 30 November 2009, ID cards were officially launched in Manchester. At the same time, they were issued, free of charge, to airport staff holding airside passes at Manchester and City Airport. On 8 February, this was extended to all residents of the North West region and residents of London aged between 16 and 24. 

Between 30 November 2009 and 3 March 2010, 4,307 people applied for an identity card. The number of people eligible to apply in Manchester alone was 1.7 million. So the applicants represent a fraction of one per cent of the target audience (0.25 per cent, actually). That’s a generous estimate, because by 3 March the rest of the North West and younger people in London had had three weeks to add their applications to those from Manchester. 

Just two weeks after the 3 March figure was released, the identity minister claimed: “Next week the 10,000th person will enrol”.

This might have been a reasonable claim, had she been talking about applications. After all, a large number of young people in London had been invited to apply. But she was talking “enrolments”.  If true, it would mean that 6,000 or so applicants would have to have been processed, interviewed, fingerprinted and had various biometric data taken in just a few weeks. That feels a bit unrealistic.

From the 2001 Census, around 11 per cent of the population was aged 16-24, and London had a population of around 7,000,000. The eligible population for ID cards, therefore, in London is at least 770,000 and, given population growth since 2001, probably higher. If we add that to the population of the North West (around 7,000,000 in the 2001 Census), the take up rate of identity cards has been around 0.13 per cent. These are conservative estimates, as the eligible population will be higher than this. 

The Home Office claims that the number of people registering an interest in ID cards by the middle of March 2010 was 60,000. Even then, the rate of interest is only around 0.77 per cent. To put these figures into context, 80 per cent of the population has a passport.

Both the opposition parties plan to axe the scheme if elected. These figures suggest it is doing no more than limping along, but the Government is reluctant to lose face by admitting it. The IPS still puts a positive gloss on things, with a recent press release claiming triumphantly: “The enrolment process went live for young people in London following the successful uptake of cards in Greater Manchester and the North West of England.”

The statistics, however, show a very different picture.