Identity Cards Bill

I had not originally intended to take up the remarks make yesterday by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. However, I was told by a former Treasury Minister who I consulted overnight that he thought the figures given by the noble Lord were hugely exaggerated. I refer to the amount the noble Lord thought would be obtained by the Treasury from taxpayers because of the introduction of this system. Reading again the clauses which we recently debated on the purpose of securing the efficient and effective provision of public services, many people will be surprised that what is being proposed in the Bill is a new Treasury method of dealing with tax evasion. I am not sure that it is one of the factors that has been fed in by the noble Lord, Lord Gould, and others to the assessments of public popularity. Furthermore, I do not believe for a moment that the revenue that will arise from the Treasury learning the names and addresses of people who apply for driving licences and passports—names they do not know already—will have anything like the consequences asserted and hoped for by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. However, that is a diversion from the central point I wanted to make. I want to follow the remarks of my noble friend Lady Anelay when she said that in no way did she attempt to blame the Minister for the somewhat painful afternoon we had yesterday. As a former Minister, I am acutely aware that government Ministers in this House are abominably treated by departments under all Administrations. They leave their Ministers to answer debates in this House, often facing people with great expertise, with inadequate briefs and information. Government departments do not understand the importance of the work of this House and they put Ministers in an extremely awkward and difficult position. I have the greatest sympathy for the Minister, who had to respond yesterday with an obviously totally inadequate brief. However, yesterday we established two facts: either the Government do not have the faintest idea of the total cost of the scheme; or, if they do, they are deliberately withholding the information from this House and from the public because they think it would make the scheme much less attractive. They repeatedly put into the public debate the figure of £584 million per annum for the Home Office to maintain the system. People may think that that does not sound a large sum of money and will be reassured by it. Indeed, the surveys which have been carried out by the Home Office, and on which I have made myself an expert having accepted the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, not only produce the figure of £584 million but emphasise that it is the current estimate of the charge to be made for this magnificent new service. But to take a 10-year figure and then divide it by 10 is a pretty odd way of arriving at a reasonable estimate of the real, annual maintenance cost. We know now that the capital costs of setting up the scheme have not been included. Perhaps even more significantly, we have not been given an estimate of the cost that will fall on all other government departments. Another piece of information to be had from this Home Office bible on which I have now become somewhat of an expert is that the cost of the sophisticated type of equipment that will be needed will be in the range of £300 to £600 for each item. When one starts to wonder whether the health service will want to make use of this service, I suspect that the billion-pound deficit that has now been accumulated by health authorities will become even greater. I referred yesterday to the burdens falling on the Foreign Office. So we are not, frankly, in a position at the moment to make comparisons of benefits and costs. That does not stop the Government making them. They take this totally meaningless figure of £584 million per annum and say, ““But look at the great benefits we’re going to provide””. Until we have real figures in which we can put some trust as being realistic estimates, the whole proposition of comparison becomes impossible. That does not mean that I do not warmly commend my noble friend’s amendment, which states that we ought to be able to know what the costs and benefits are before we commit ourselves to a scheme of this kind. That is clearly the case. Therefore, I will not ask the Minister suddenly to produce some new figures or even to repeat the defences which she offered to us yesterday. We know the current position. We simply say that before Parliament finally approves this measure, we should be given—we must be given—real cost figures so that we can make a judgment on the merits of the proposals that are being put to us by the Government. This is the job of Parliament; Parliament is there: to decide whether we are doing something that can be justified as being in the interest of the public and the taxpayer. Until we have those figures, I suggest that we are not in a position to do the job that Parliament is there to do. Therefore, I shall not press the Minister. We clearly will not get the information we seek tonight, but we are entitled to be provided with it in a full and adequate form before we reach the next stage of the Bill. If we are not, I hope that we will pass a whole series of amendments which will embarrass the Government and make life extremely difficult for them.