Since the merger of the Home Office Identity Cards Programme and the UK Passport Service to create the Identity and Passport Service in April 2006, projects to deliver enhancements to passports, identity cards and other improvements have been necessarily combined.
Much of the work conducted by Identity and Passport Service cannot be categorised, both financially and operationally, as contributing towards either the introduction of passports with facial images and fingerprints or identity cards alone. Consequently it is not possible to identify which external companies and agencies have been awarded contracts solely for the identity cards programme.