Identity Cards Bill

My name is on the amendment. The issue of the estimated capital costs of establishing and integrating as well as then running the identity card scheme could not be more important constitutionally. That is a crucial factor in legislation at any time, but with a project such as this—untried, grandiose in world terms let alone national ones, and affecting every adult member of the population in due course—it is paramount. In our system, where there are few separations of powers between the legislature and the executive, the role of opposition parties in this situation is clear. But holding any government effectively to account is even more an anticipatory exercise than one of auditing the aftermath. Prevention, as usual, is much better than cure, if cure there be. Although Ministers opposite may raise an eyebrow when they hear it, one does try to put oneself in their shoes over issues such as this. So is it reasonable for us to be adamant on the issue of costs? Is it not enough to rely on the partial statistic that the Government have provided bit by bit? The questions are self-answering. The Government have refused to give broad, comprehensive estimates—and I refer particularly to the start-up costs—on grounds that,"““the estimates are commercially sensitive and to release them may prejudice the procurement process and the Department’s ability to obtain value for money from potential suppliers””." That is, I believe, untenable. Let us be clear. If any government on any Bill, of whatever importance and scale, can deny MPs and Peers key estimates without which the legislation will be no more than a financial pig in a poke, we are in real constitutional trouble. If the choice really is between prejudice to a procurement process and prejudice to proper parliamentary deliberation and legislation, the latter is overwhelmingly more important. The cart must not be put before the horse. Furthermore, the London School of Economics group has discussed the commercial sensitivity of opposition requests with more than 20 of the key private sector tenderers, and both they and the LSE group reckon that any sensitivity is all but non- existent. I believe that the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, was to the same effect. What will rule with the commercial players is the sort of prices they expect the competition to quote and the value to them of the contracts concerned, which are potentially enormous and will put them in a world-wide lead. Refusal to supply Parliament with key cost estimates in a Bill such as this damages the legislative process profoundly. Politics, after all, is about choices. If ever there was a Bill where that was relevant, it is the Identity Cards Bill. Claims made by the Government as to its beneficial effects on crime, social security fraud, immigration abuse, national security and whatever else has been widely challenged. The recent remarks by the former head of MI5 highlight just one aspect of that. In order to legislate sensibly we need to be able to compare alternative uses for the huge sums which the ID card scheme will devour in terms of increasing, for example, police numbers, the number of entry port officials, social security factual checks and so on. The difference between the latest LSE thinking, which is still short of a worked-out revision of its cost estimates, of between £19 billion to £24 billion over 10 years, and the £6 billion to which the Government have owned up—confined as it is to the cost of issuing identity cards and passports over the same period—is hopelessly wide. The House, the country and the taxpayer ought to have the best available estimates. It is not as if the ID scheme is straightforward. It is novel in world terms. Such a national, central, compulsory, complex database is unprecedented. Surely we are wise enough by now to realise that government estimates of the cost of such ambitious projects need the most sceptical scrutiny. Whether it is the Scottish Parliament, the Dome, the Eurofighter or any weapons system you care to mention, the writing has been on the wall for decades. It says, ““Legislator beware””. I accept that it is difficult to estimate costs in these circumstances, but that is precisely why Parliament must have the best ““heads-together”” assessments. That is particularly the case here, where the Government have hung their hat on the scheme, against widespread opposition, and may, very humanly, be tempted to gild the financial lily. Lastly, I should like to say a word in praise of the LSE group. It was wrong of the Government, in this House and in the other place, to criticise its work in the way they did, accusing it of lacking rigour and, indeed, questioning whether it was an LSE report at all. Sir Howard Davies, director of the university, has authorised me to quote from a letter he wrote to me recently in which he said:"““we have had some extraordinary responses to our work from the government, who appear to think that they can deal with a Report from a group of academics from a University in the way they would a submission from the official opposition””." This House, and indeed the country, should be immensely grateful to the LSE group. It has endeavoured, with one hand tied behind its back in terms of government co-operation, to do the work that the Government themselves should willingly have done and even now should do. Further, in the correspondence to which I have already referred, the Government have made it clear that they have not obtained from any other government departments the set-up and integration costs of utilising the ID card database. So all the figures with which we have been provided have been confined to Home Office expenditures. What we do know from the letter from the noble Baroness is that nothing is allowed in the £584 million annual running costs for the set-up costs or initial capital outlay, the proposed online identity verification service, the necessary enhanced and enlarged IT infrastructure capacity and so on. I have spoken at large to the amendment. No doubt aspects of it could be improved, and indeed the noble Baroness, in so well moving the amendment, said as much. I still do not see why the Government could not at least open the workings of the ministerial committee on identity cards, chaired by Tony McNulty, to Opposition MPs and Peers, so that these matters can be looked at in detail and in confidence. LSE experts should be admitted to that process, again in confidence, to bring their immense body of knowledge to the aid of the general endeavour. At the end of those deliberations, Parliament should have before it the key all-in statistics, with some of the finer print known to, and understood by, Members of this and the other place. That should allow us to do our duty in a proper way. The only thing that strikes me as being constitutionally and practically unacceptable is to allow the Bill to proceed on the present, semi-blind basis.