The Government's flagship ID cards scheme suffered an embarrassing setback when a bank refused to accept one as proof of identity.

Darren McTeggart tried to use the £30 card to pick up a replacement credit card from a branch of Santander – formerly Abbey – in Manchester, where the scheme was rolled out on a voluntary basis last year.

Mr McTeggart, one of the first people to get the card, said: “They said it was not on their list of approved ID.

“I sent an email to the head office, but they wouldn’t budge. The government has been pushing this card on TV and elsewhere so it beggars belief why the bank won’t accept it.”

Santander admitted they had made a mistake and a spokesman said: “We do accept them. This seems to have been a customer service issue and we are looking into it.”

A spokesman for the Identity and Passport Service said: “Santander’s website lists the National Identity Card as a valid proof of identity and it is updating its guidelines to ensure staff are fully informed.”

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said: “This just underlined what an expensive white elephant the Government's ID card scheme has become. It's been rejected as a travel document, it's been rejected as an identity document in a bank, and it's still costing us hundreds of millions of pounds to set up the scheme. It's high time that Ministers faced reality, and scrapped the whole project.”

Related: India to issue all 1.2 billion citizens with biometric ID cards

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, Feb 4 2010
By: Tom Whitehead