(i) Counterfeit (skimmed/cloned) cards
£129.7m
(ii) Cards lost or stolen £114.4m
(iii) Card not present £150.8m
(iv) Mail non-receipt £72.9m
(v) Fraudulent applications £13.1m
(vi) Account takeover £23.8m

Items i, ii and iv will be taken care of by Chip & PIN.
iii won’t be touched by ID Cards

v and vi may be improved by ID cards, but that’s only 7% of the claimed total, which I’d be very surprised to see 100% effectiveness in this. Other security measures being taken by most card-issuers will also reduce vi quite a bit – Egg already call to confirm unusual large transactions.

Nae doot we’ll be seeing the the Benefit Fraud Bogey being trotted out soon by the popular press (by, say, the still Labour supporting Sun). Let’s keep in mind the whopping £20m-£50m (woo) figure for identity-related benefit fraud for when that happens. That’s the size of saving that DWP recoups in a tactical project, barely mentioned in passing in a Commons written answer…

Of the rest, I’ve *never* been asked to prove my identity when paying in person by CC (except for goods/services which *need* ID checking, when the ID element is for the goods/service, not the payment). HMG presumably hasn’t noticed a wee project which takes care of the vast majority of face to face CC fraud, finally coming into effect on Tuesday week.

The “substantial portion” language seems to imply 372m is too big anyway.

“The cost to UKPS of measures to counter identity
fraud when processing applications for UK passports issued in the UK.”

… isn’t that what the passport service *is for* in the first place? It certainly not what I’d call fraud.

It would be nice if the government actually came out and defined what “identity fraud” was, and perhaps went so far as to make it a crime since it is so costly and scary.

Spyblog has the 2002 breakdown of “identity fraud” cost to the nation, and some good discussion.

“big chnk inder onderct” = “big chunk under indirect”