http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/29/id_scheme_eats_cip/
John Lettice
"Among the Home Office 'concessions' on ID cards hailed (with quite remarkable promptness) this week by Home Affairs Committee chairman John Denham MP (Lab) was 'the rationalisation of current database proposals and the dropping of the Citizen Information Project.' Denham appears however to have been in error in cheering the demise of the CIP on behalf of his Committee, for just 24 hours later Treasury Chief Secretary Paul Boateng issued a written statement to Parliament indicating the CIP is actually being reworked to use the national ID register.
Or vice versa? According to Boateng's statement: 'The CIP team has investigated the costs and benefits of a range of potential options for delivering a population register. It has recommended that proposals for a national identity register (NIR), as part of the Government's proposals for ID cards, mean that if ID cards were to become compulsory then it may be more cost effective to deliver these benefits through the NIR, rather than develop a separate register. The Government has accepted this recommendation.'"
