A Home Office minister has revealed that only 13,200 identity cards were issued before 11 May.
Conservative MP Damien Green said that around 6,000 cards were issued in Greater Manchester, where the cards were first trialled.
In a parliamentary written answer published on Monday, Green confirmed that "card refunds or credit for a future passport application will not be offered" to people that have purchased the cards. In late May the coalition government announced that the £4.5bn national identity card scheme will be scrapped within 100 days.
"The Identity and Passport Service is writing to each cardholder informing them of progress and contact details for further advice," said Green in response to questions from Labour MP Paul Goggins.
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In March, then home secretary Alan Johnson predicted that 17 million ID cards would be in circulation by 2017. He also said that the scheme would have paid for itself.
In an article for Guardian.co.uk published as parliament prepared to give the identity document bill repealing ID cards its second reading, Green says that around 3,000 ID cards "were issued for free to workers at Manchester and London City airports". He also calls campaigners that have criticised the coalition government's decision to continue issuing biometric residence permits while scrapping ID cards for UK citizens "misguided".
"We are required by European Union law to provide biometric residence permits to non-EU foreign nationals. They are issued under entirely different legislation. They are not 'ID cards for foreign nationals', as the previous government called them," he writes.
Green argues that the protocol for foreign nationals differs to the ID card scheme because there is no legal obligation for foreign nationals to carry their permit with them – although this would not have been the case for UK ID cards either – and "biometric data is not kept on the National Identity Register".
"Unlike the identity card for British citizens, this card serves a purpose by helping foreign nationals easily prove they have a right to live and work freely in the UK," he adds.
