Identity Cards Bill

No, I will not. The structure that I have described indicates that there are four common sense reasons for rejecting the amendments from the other place: costs, benefits, convenience and security. First, on costs, we want the identity card scheme to provide the greatest benefits at the lowest cost to the taxpayer. The Lords amendments would increase the cost of establishing the scheme because of the greater complexity of handling an optional service that would mean that some people could opt out of having an identity card when obtaining a passport. Moreover, uncertainty would affect the unit cost and thus the fee level for identity cards. That is a serious point. Cost is a factor that has been raised across the House and the Lords amendments make the issue more, rather than less, difficult to resolve. Secondly, there would be an impact on the benefits of the identity card scheme. Reducing the speed of the roll-out of ID cards would slow down the wider benefits such as combating illegal immigration or improving the effectiveness of public services. Thirdly, there would be inconvenience to the public if the Lords amendments were passed. It does not make sense to issue a biometric passport without the accompanying identity card. The process of enrolling biometrics and checking identity for both documents will be virtually identical. The same data will be held in both cases. Fourthly, there is the question of security. We would directly be offering an open goal to fraudsters, criminals and immigration offenders if we said that they could simply choose to avoid being included in the national identity register when they applied for a passport or an immigration document.