The six-monthly Dobson report, the Home Office's rolling 10-year estimate of the costs of the ID scheme, has just been published. Yet again, it is late. Yet again, it reveals delays and cost increases for plans to issue ID cards.

Most of the cost increases are hidden from the reported headline figures by the simple expedient of delaying them so that they avoid the 10-year period that the report considers. The ID scheme will incur substantial costs to the exchequer long after the current government has gone.

The Home Office has also buried substantial costs by transferring the burden directly to taxpayers. Citizens will have to pay for their own biometric enrolment through the private sector.

In light of recent revelations that passport interrogations have failed to catch a single fraudster, it is unsurprising that ministers are scaling back plans to interrogate everyone to whom an ID card is issued. But this interrogation process was supposed to be the central element guaranteeing the scheme's integrity. Fraudulent ID cards will be no harder to obtain than existing documents, such as passports.

Unfortunately, the ID database remains as intrusive as ever and the reporting requirements placed on citizens, with £1000 fines for failure to report a change of circumstances to the authorities, are no less burdensome than before.

Intrusive, unaffordable, late and useless. MPs should find it an easy decision to scrap the ID scheme before it goes any further.

Geraint Bevan, Glasgow.