Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, is absolutely right to praise the work that this House did on the Bill in relation to costs. There was a great deal of criticism from the Front Bench that this House should spend so much time drawing attention to the possibility that the costs being estimated would greatly overrun. Of course, like other noble Lords, I am extremely pleased that on this occasion the House of Commons has taken some note of what your Lordships have said. It almost makes one believe that attending this House and speaking in it is worthwhile. That is encouraging. However, I am a little concerned that this issue will be only about costs and not about benefits. I am also very concerned that expenditure on the scheme is already going ahead—and going ahead apace so far as I can see. I should like to know exactly what decent mechanism will be put in operation to ensure that the costs do not go overboard and that the project can be stopped at any time when it seems that the benefits far outweigh any costs. That is essential in handling public money. I shall illustrate the point briefly. When I was chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee in the county borough of Reading, the borough treasurer said, ““We must have a computer. In fact, we must have more than one computer””. I said, ““What benefits are we going to get from this?””““Oh””, he said, ““we’ll save a lot of money and we shall be able to reduce a lot of staff””. I said to him, ““You’re going to have to prove that””. I added, ““We will agree to this as a committee provided that you bring to us every month a full cost-benefit analysis. We want to know how much money the borough council is going to save and how many staff have been reduced””. So long as I remained chairman of the Finance and General Purposes Committee, the monthly reports came forward, but unfortunately I believe that eventually they stopped. It is essential that there is proper control over public expenditure for particular purposes; otherwise the costs will run away, as we have seen in so many instances, including in the cases of the National Health Service and Child Support Agency computer systems. We can see exactly how they get out of hand and no one can stop them. I hope that the noble Baroness will take that on board and assure me that some mechanism will be in place to stop the gathering rush in the expenditure of public money.