A couple of interesting points missing...
Just read the BBC version of this story and noticed a couple of things
In this article, the analyst says "There's a distinct possibility that the cost of the e-passport could rise again, as the government seeks to pass on the additional costs of the second generation passport to the citizen." This is interesting considering that the the BBC claim "Passport costs have gone up since 2003 to pay for the new biometric passports and future security measures." So does that mean that the IPS has forgotten that it has already charged for the 2nd Gen document and double dip?
Also, missing from this article was a quote from 'an IPS spokesman' that is quite worrying - "The ID card will enable you to confirm your identity in a secure, convenient way in a range of transactions with public and private sector organisations that you cannot with an ePassport,"
Is this spec creep? I thought the idea of an ID card was that it was a 'passport lite', ie a form of identification only. Are we now being told that the ID card is to hold far more personal info than is necessary just to confirm identity?