Identity Cards Bill

As I have already observed on an earlier occasion, the noble Lord’s question gives me the opportunity to remind him that this Bill may well prove to be the Government’s poll tax. He ought to keep off that one. The Prime Minister may not have probed the detail—he is too busy handing out billions to the European Community—but I find it hard to believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer—and even Permanent Secretaries and the various government departments—is not interested in what the total costs are going to be. So either the Government have no idea or they are deliberately withholding the information in order to give a false impression to Parliament and the people. On page 5 of the letter we are told that public sector organisations may not need to invest, at least in the first years, and may not require readers for the card. My noble friend suggested there would be a large list of organisations which would need to use them. I pointed out in earlier debates that the Foreign Office will need the biometric input equipment in order to issue passports around the world. The Government have already made claims for the financial benefits which suggest that HM Customs and Revenue, the Department for Work and Pensions and the police forces will all need readers. There is a casual comment that integration could be absorbed into regular business updates. But all that will require a very secure system, which is likely to be very expensive. You cannot have communication with all these private and public organisations without an unprecedented attention to security. As has been pointed out, there is a reference in the response to the KPMG report, but that reference omits to say that KPMG queries assumptions such as the 10-year card life, biometric costs and running and depreciation costs for the mobile centres. The Prime Minister has said that no government would go ahead if the cost to the public was seen by them to be unreasonable. In the light of the Government’s record, in my view, Parliament should not allow the Government to proceed until Parliament is satisfied that the cost to the public will not be unreasonable.