Home Office advertises incompetence to sell ID cards
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007Joan Ryan today announced that 10,000 fraudulent passport applicants were granted passports in the last year. Dhiren Barot, serving 40 years in prison, apparently had 7 fraudulent passports.
Of course, they’re telling us this to convince the British public that ID cards are necessary. Is this the first time the government has boasted about its own failures just to sell another policy?
The thing that really troubles me, however, is that Joan Ryan’s ministerial statement says:
0.25% of applications (equivalent to 16,500 fraudulent passport applications a year) were believed to be from people attempting to obtain a passport fraudulently. Almost half of these applications were stopped.
But the press release says:
IPS detected some 6,500 attempted frauds last year.
In what world is 6,500 half of 16,500?
