WRITTEN ON August 13th, 2009 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Foundation of Trust, Identity, Save Time and Money, We told you so..., What do we want?

Wowser. Kable’s Philippe Martin (who developed the original ID costing model on which all sensible industry estimates and also the LSE’s estimates were based) reckons cancelling the Benighted ID Scheme will still save £3.1bn.

A detailed analysis of the National Identity Scheme’s costs for UK citizens by Kable suggests that the £4.95bn cost over 10 years could be reduced by £3.08bn to £1.88bn, if a future government abandoned identity cards, the National Identity Register and fingerprints on passports.

Cue politicians and groupthinking officials shooting the messenger. But any credible refutation of his work requires proper analysis of his model to be credible. I was there when they shot this down last time. They didn’t have a clue about the basis of what they were criticising. And they weren’t interested in an informed debate.