{"id":5524,"date":"2009-04-28T11:32:55","date_gmt":"2009-04-28T10:32:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5524"},"modified":"2009-04-28T12:11:16","modified_gmt":"2009-04-28T11:11:16","slug":"could-the-government-drop-id-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/contributions\/could-the-government-drop-id-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Could The Government Drop ID Cards?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rinf.com\">RINF News<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A senior Cabinet minister has sparked a flurry of speculation that the national ID card scheme will be axed to ease public spending and reduce Britain&#8217;s debts.<\/p>\n<p>The controversial ID card scheme\u00a0will cost the taxpayer more than \u00a35bn, however cancelling the\u00a0ID card national rollout, due in 2011, will cost\u00a0\u00a340m.<\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0minister, according to The Independent newspaper,\u00a0is reported to have said: \u201cMy sense is that ID cards will not go ahead. We have to find savings somewhere, and it would be better to shelve schemes like this that aren\u2019t popular.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Government has\u00a0just signed contracts\u00a0of \u00a3750m\u00a0to set up\u00a0a\u00a0biometric database and upgrade passport applications, ID cards would be used in conjunction with the database.<\/p>\n<p>Former cabinet minister, Stephen Byers,\u00a0is\u00a0the first senior Labour figure to\u00a0admit that ID cards may have to be axed<\/p>\n<p>He also suggested the \u00a325bn replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system also be axed.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking about Trident, the unnamed senior Cabinet minister source said: &#8220;There is a case for shelving Trident Two, but the number of jobs that go with it is just too great. I just can&#8217;t see us cancelling a Trident replacement now.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RINF News A senior Cabinet minister has sparked a flurry of speculation that the national ID card scheme will be axed to ease public spending and reduce Britain&#8217;s debts. The controversial ID card scheme\u00a0will cost the taxpayer more than \u00a35bn, however cancelling the\u00a0ID card national rollout, due in 2011, will cost\u00a0\u00a340m. The\u00a0minister, according to The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1615],"tags":[37,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-5524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-contributions","7":"category-uk-news","8":"tag-id-cards","9":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}