Identity Cards Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has done me a great favour in referring to the manifesto. On these Benches, we recognise the Salisbury convention—we live with it and work with it. We also saw the precise wording of the Labour Party manifesto. In another place, the noble Lord’s previous colleague, Mr Neil Gerrard, a Labour Member of Parliament, also read those words carefully. He brought forward a vital element for constructive debate and I hope we shall be able to achieve resolution on that point, and on others, during the course of our very constructive proceedings. I shall return to my first group of amendments. After three minutes, noble Lords will be glad that we have got that far. The amendments ask the Government to set out their reasons for believing that the scheme is technically deliverable in a way that can be guaranteed to be fully accurate, secure, reliable, affordable in the light of other public spending requirements and sustainable into the future. Amendment No. 1 requires the Government to review the efficacy of the scheme annually—I shall deal with efficiency later—and to set out whether the costs and measures that they have used to establish the scheme are proportionate to the alleged benefits that the Government say will be enjoyed. It also requires the Government to set out annually the reasons why their objectives could not more effectively be achieved by other means. We believe that the amendment will act as a continual duty on the Government to be accountable to Parliament for the operation of the scheme. Do the Government agree with the Home Affairs Select Committee of another place when it concluded in paragraph 197 of its report published in July 2004 that,"““The type of card to be used is a decision of the same order of importance as the architecture of the database, since it has consequences for issues such as how the card will be used and the number of readers and the infrastructure needed””?" The Select Committee of another place also observed that some of the Government’s choices, such as the nature of the chip, follow on the decision to use the passport as the basis for an ID card rather than any independent assessment of what will be the most appropriate for an ID card itself. It was concerned that the Home Office has taken key decisions without any external reference, technical assessment or public debate. How will the Government seek to avoid the problems of other major procurement projects by reflecting those different requirements in the design from an early stage? Given the Government’s often repeated claims about the security of using ID cards, what consideration have the Government given to protecting the ID card system, should access to the central database be disabled for whatever reason? Amendment No. 10 raises questions about the security of the system. The rewards for a successful attack would be enormous—let us be under no illusions about that. People will try to gain access to the system. Can the Minister say what decisions have been taken about what will happen to a corrupted database? Anyone who uses a computer, as noble Lords do, will know that an IT system can crash. A network can slow down at peak-load periods. If an ID system is dependent solely on checks being made online—that is that the card cannot be relied on to be authentic in itself—the system will be hugely vulnerable. Do the Government accept that it should be possible to check the card securely off-line? If not, how do they propose that cards can be used securely off-line? What process will there be for making reliable visual checks? Surely, the reality is that many checks will have to be visual, whether by a shop assistant, a police officer or others. If the card is to be useful for the police, how do the Government propose to ensure that a forensic, non-erasable record of the card’s history is maintained so that it can be useful in criminal cases involving attempts to alter the card fraudulently? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the design of ID cards is flexible enough to accommodate future requirements, such as the storage capacity, which perhaps cannot be anticipated at the start of what has to be a 10-year programme? We shall have the opportunity under future amendments to examine more closely the Government’s projections of the costs of setting up the scheme. It is not appropriate for me to go down that path on this amendment, which considers an annual assessment of how far the benefits are worth the costs. By the time we come to debate the thorny issue of costs, I hope that the Government will have provided a more detailed version of the KPMG report than was tabled in the Library last week in response to my request to the Minister’s office. I am grateful to her for the steps that she has taken so far, but I believe that we need to flesh out some of the detail more thoroughly. My amendment would require the Government to be accountable on an annual basis to Parliament for justifying their expenditure against sensible criteria. Surely that is sensible and necessary. These amendments were originally grouped by the Government. I tried to ungroup them but decided that, to help the Committee, they should be regrouped. Therefore, I apologise for the length of my speech. Amendment No. 12 considers the reliability of the recording of biometrics and asks how reliable they are, both individually and combined. The Minister’s colleague, Mr McNulty, recently admitted that there are problems in capturing accurately the biometrics of certain people—for example, those with brown eyes and those who are bald. The Cabinet Office stated in its report that,"““around 10 to 15 per cent of genuine people fail the biometric tests set at the highest level of corroboration””." That study was published in July 2002—some while ago. Do the Government intend to operate at the ““highest level of corroboration””? What assessment have the Government made of the categories of people who are likely to present particular difficulty in relation to the capturing of biometrics? What estimate has been made of the number of people in those categories? How do the Government intend to overcome those difficulties, and what is the estimated cost of doing so? What is the latest advice that the Government have received about their possible liability where negligence is established in relation to an inaccurate entry in the National Identity Register, and loss is suffered by an individual as a result of misidentification? The noble Baroness’s reply to that final question—noble Lords will be pleased to hear—will help to inform our later important debate on Amendment No. 70 to Clause 3, which is tabled in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Phillips of Sudbury. With that raft of questions, I beg to move.