On double counting costs for an ID system

In recent days, Home Office Ministers and even the Prime Minister have described the LSE cost projections as ‘absurd’, ‘nonsense’, and ‘incompetent’. One Home Office Minister claimed that our costings are based on double-counting.1 They also dispute our assumption that identity documents will have to be renewed every four to five years. In this document we will explain how the Government came to its costing of £93 per person over ten years. Then we will repeat our assumptions, and explain how we came to our figures on the contentious issue of double counting.