The public can’t wait to get their hands on ID cards, apparently. Come 2012 we’ll have to carry them, but Home Secretary Jacqui Smith told the BBC today that she has people, “coming up to me and saying that they don’t want to wait that long.”

 Well, I’m in no hurry, personally. The longer I can keep my biometric data out of the Government’s hands, the longer I can keep it from being accidentally left on a bus, in a pub, stolen on a laptop or dropped somewhere en route by a courier. Never mind the privacy implications of having to hand over finger prints and a photograph to the Home Office, just to leave the country – can they be trusted to hang on to them?

 To me, it feels like the Labour party is urgently attempting to rush these cards into circulation in order to make it harder for the Conservatives to cancel the scheme when they come to power in 2010. Remember, Labour is the only party in favour of the scheme; the Conservatives have promised to cancel it, and the Lib Dems have called it a “laminated poll tax”.

And, even if you don’t mind handing over data, there’s the cost. Immigrants and airport workers are the first to have the cards foisted upon them, and they’ll have to pay £30 each for the privilege. It’s thought that just providing fingerprints and photographs for applications will become a £200 million industry.

 We won’t just have to pay to order one, though – we’ll be footing the bill for the infrastructure, too. More than £5 billion, at the last count. There’s a lot of profit to be had on a Government contract like that, but there are even murmurs that companies won’t want to be involved with it.

 ”What company is going embarrass itself to the tune of millions for a contract that everyone outside the Home Office itself knows will be cancelled by a new administration?” said Phil Booth, national coordinator of the NO2ID scheme, speaking to the BBC. Currently only a handful of companies are in the running, as we covered earlier this year.

 So, is Jacqui Smith telling the truth? Are we all squirming in our seats with excitement, waiting for our laminated, biometric ID cards – or are we all slightly miffed about the idea in general, and waiting instead for the cancellation of an over-priced, ill-conceived, expensive and pointless invasion of privacy? Let me know in the comments, I’m intrigued.