Academics at the London School of Economics have accused the Home Office of committing "substantial material errors and misrepresentations of fact" in its earlier criticism of their ID card report.
While the academics welcome the fact that the Home Office is engaging "more fully with its critics" over the government's ID card bill, they say that it has disregarded the "vast majority" of the LSE's comments and recommendations. Last month the Home Office issued its response to the LSE's report. It questioned the LSE's assumptions over costs and criticising the alternative ID model it proposed as "insecure", claiming that it would "facilitate the creation of multiple and false identities".
In its reply to the Home Office, the LSE says that it makes its criticisms without providing alternative data. It also says that the Home Office has ignored comprehensive sections on identity fraud, policing, crime, national security and counter terrorism.
The LSE said, however, that it would take some of the criticisms on board.
"The Home Office appears to have ignored the substantial analysis of cost assumptions published in the LSE report," it said. "As a result the rebuttals published in its response relating to cost estimates are largely irrelevant. We have, however, accepted a small number of criticisms of the alternative blueprint and will be considering these over the summer in the consultation phase for our proposals."
The LSE was also careful to distance itself from cost calculations produced at the same time by Kable. The LSE projected that the scheme would cost between £10.6bn and £19.3bn, compared with a Home Office figure of £5.8bn. According to Kable's figures, the median cost of the scheme is £10.2bn, with a low estimate of £6.8bn and a high of £15.6bn.
"The Home Office's paper has confused the cost estimates provided by Kable, with those developed by LSE. We stressed in the acknowledgements section of our report that the Kable framework was used as the basis of our approach to developing cost projections. However, the subsequent sets of figures bear little or no relation to each other, as each was built on different parameters and assumptions," the LSE said.
Quelle: KableNET, 08.08.2005
