War of words escalates as Home Office goes on the offensive and rebukes critics
The London School of Economics is to release a follow-up to its hard-hitting critique of the Government's proposed national identity system, amid fierce criticism from Whitehall over their original report.
The Home Office has waded deeper into the ongoing row by launching a detailed and wholesale rebuttal of the LSE's highly-critical study of the planned identity card scheme.
The Department's much-awaited official response, published on 22 July, firmly rejects the academic's main concerns, devoting an entire section to what it calls "Inaccuracies in the LSE's analysis of the Government's proposals."
Here the Home Office is on somewhat shaky ground – denying for example a claim that the Government planned to use ID cards as entitlement cards, as ministers had originally referred to the scheme. "This is not the case", replied the Department. "The ID card will be used as secure proof of identity but user organisations will use their own business rules to assess entitlement, although some pieces of verified identity information will assist that process."
The Home Office levels its most severe criticisms at the cost analysis of its identity card scheme included in the LSE's report, which had put the potential costs at between £10.6bn and £19.3bn, compared to Government estimates of £5.6bn. It branded the analysis as "confused" and based on "misguided assumptions" which had inflated the cost estimates.
The response said that in terms of numbers of identity cards issued, the lowest number quoted in the analysis was "significantly in excess of the Government's estimates"; biometric card readers actually cost around a tenth of the £3-4,000 claimed; the ID cards could be replaced every 10 years, not five; processes assumed to be manual could be automated, while marketing costs, estimated at £500m-£1bn, were a "significant overestimate", it said.
The Home Office also attacked the alternative model put forward by the academics.as "insecure", "contradictory", "extremely vague", "wrong", carrying a "high risk of failure" and likely to assist identity fraud.
"The LSE scheme would not gain public trust", says the document. "It is likely to be expensive, yet would be less user-friendly and offer few benefits to society due to its security weakness."
Ironically, these are exactly the very same concerns directed at the Government's proposals.
In a statement, Professor Ian Angell, convenor of the LSE's Department of Information Systems said the academics would consider the Home Office's response as they work on 'Version Two' of the report, due in the Autumn.
"We are encouraged that the government has responded to the LSE report", said Professor Angell. "This is an important step forward in nurturing a meaningful debate.
He added: "We have not been given an opportunity to scrutinise the government's document. We will comment substantively when we have had time to digest the points made.
"We are concerned, however, that the Home Office document contains material errors and appears to contain false assumptions about the alternative blueprint proposed. We will clarify and correct these aspects in our response."
Related Links
Home Office Response to LSE Alternative Blueprint (PDF: 627KB)
Cheaper, More Secure ID System Set Out
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