Written question asked by Danny Alexander (Liberal Democrat) on Thursday, 24 November 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Monday, 28 November 2005. It was answered by Hazel Blears (Labour) on Tuesday, 20 December 2005 on behalf of the Home Office.

National Firearms Register/National Identity Card Project

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the budget is for (a) the National Firearms Register and (b) the National Identity Card project for each year from 2002–03; and how many staff from his Department are working on each.

Answer: The Police Information Technology Organisation's (PITO) budget for the National Firearms Licensing Management System for 2002–03 was £997,000 (8), 2003–04 was £1,625,000 (5) and for 2004–05 it was £1,400,000 (5).The Project Manager and Project Support Officer are the only people employed on this project full time. All other areas of PITO contribute time as and when needed. The figure in brackets represents the number of full time equivalents for each year.The Identity Cards Programme expenditure for 2002–03 was £280,801.94, for 2003–04 it was £1,035,717.55 and for 2004–05 it was £12,376,637.77.A total of 49 Home Office staff are employed on the Identity Cards Programme. Within the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) there are 6.9 people (full time equivalent) working on the ID cards project. A number of people at United Kingdom Passport Service (UKPS) work on the ID cards project, although none exclusively, in terms of full-time equivalent there were 3.2 UKPS staff working on the ID cards project.

Secondary information