Recession, belt-tightening and increased Home Office expenditure

So, we're in the midst of a major recession, the Government has spent huge amounts bailing out the fat cats of international banking, and Joe Public is tightening his or her belt.  The Higher Education Sector, in which I work, is certainly feeling the chill wind of cut-backs, and in my Institution's case this comes on top of the Goverment's ELQ policy.

So, one might have thought that costly and pointless exercises such as the dreadful ID card plan, and the even more despicable Interception Modernisation Programme might have been curtailed or dropped.  Not a bit of it.  Computer Weekly reports (Home Office trebles consultancy spend):

Home Office spending on its top five consultants almost trebled from £27.3m to £77.8m in the past year as it wrestled with two huge and controversial projects, the national identity scheme and the interception modernisation programme.

Mind you, these sums (which total £105 million for 2008-9) pale into insignificance with the projected costs of ID cards and IMP, which escalated to tens of billions of pounds.