Identity Cards Bill

I support what the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, said about the importance of process. I was delighted to see the Bill arrive with a detailed regulatory impact assessment. However, the Bill has now gone through the Office of Government Commerce gateway process, which was introduced simply because so many projects—particularly those which we had inherited from previous administrations—were running over budget. We also inherited other processes such as PFI from the previous Conservative administration. Indeed, through implementing that properly, the majority of projects now come in on budget and on time unlike in the past. So process is important. As well as the Office of Government Commerce gateway process, I see that the department has put in place an independent assurance panel to provide additional oversight of the programme. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, has a high reputation in matters of financial analysis, but I hope that the Home Office business case, as analysed by that KPMG independent review, would meet even her own high standards. The review concluded that,"““the methodology used to cost the ID cards proposal is robust and appropriate for this stage of development. We recognise, in the areas we reviewed, the high quality of the Outline Business Case and supporting information that has been produced to date by the ID Cards Programme””." The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, pointed to KPMG’s concerns about sensitivity analysis and so on, but we also should note that a summary of work in progress has been published by the Home Office in response to those KPMG points. As has been said repeatedly, ultimate scrutiny rests with Parliament, but the scheme will go through the Treasury first. Having been recently been involved in financial reviews under the present Chancellor, I can assure noble Lords that the relevant departments will require a robust business case and cost/benefit analysis before they get past the Treasury’s scrutiny. We should bear in mind in this place, as always, that the other place will approve the estimates of government expenditure. On the question of commercial confidentiality, I am sure that the Government will make information available where possible. If it is as important in constitutional terms as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, it certainly will be available. But it is also prudent that you do not provide such detailed costings as to give an exact benchmark of how much you are prepared to spend to contractors. You would perhaps be putting too much faith in the competitive process in that regard. There would be situations where some element of discretion might be sensible. As for the requirement that the costs incurred by other departments over 10 years be estimated, that is simply impracticable. The huge variety of applications across—we are told—200 departments and agencies will make it an incremental process. It will take place by department and agency according to what the Treasury will allow. It will also be included in the annual capital expenditures of those departments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said, the depreciation of IT would normally take place over a period of less than 10 years, and the capital investment programme has been greatly increased in recent years. So money is available as the technological upgrades go through. So we should not say, as the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, implied, that noble Lords on the Opposition Benches should dismiss the proposals because they are utterly unaffordable. It will be incremental, because this is not only about the delivery of more efficient public services everywhere at once. The principal points that have been made were about the establishment of a firm identity—