Government: Draft Legislative Programme

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing this debate. The Government have embarked on a most interesting experiment, which I hope will be of value to the people being consulted and to the Government. The test of that will be the extent to which we observe any changes as a result of our comments. I should emphasise that some of us, at least, feel that it is most important that the debate that we are having today should in no way pre-empt the full week’s debate that we will have, as we do every year, on the Queen’s Speech, which is one of the most important parliamentary occasions for scrutinising government proposals and, we hope, for helping the Government. I say as an aside that it would have been nice to have had a similar consultation on the new mandate for the intergovernmental conference on the new European treaty. The IGC started two days ago and it looks like being virtually completed—largely, I suspect, behind closed doors, during Europe’s two holiday months. I note that the Government have already expressed considerable reluctance to contemplate reopening any of the agreements that were made by Mr Blair in Brussels in his last days in office. Be that as it may, consultation on major change is and should be a crucial part of democracy, and Governments who ignore that undermine their credibility and the confidence of the electorate in them. In the short time that I have, I shall focus on the part of the programme that relates to the counterterrorism Bill and the Prime Minister’s Statement yesterday. The keys to counterterrorism are imagination and efficiency in translating it into action. It was the former Home Secretary who memorably told us that the Home Office was ““not fit for purpose”” in this area; he was referring to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, which is a crucial part of counterterrorism operations. It remains to be seen whether splitting the Home Office will make any difference. The arrival in government of the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, could certainly do so. He has been used to efficiency and action. In his former world, lives depended on it. Of course, lives depend on the efficiency of the Home Office, but it has never quite understood that. Let us be quite clear; this Government have been in office for 10 years, so there is no way in which any inefficiencies can be blamed on the previous Government or the Conservative Party. If Mr Brown were to try that line, I suspect that the electorate would simply laugh at him. I shall focus on three areas: identity cards, passports, and defence against air attack by al-Qaeda terrorism. First, there is the huge cost of identity cards. The magazine Computing, published today, reveals that the Government have spent £53 million so far on consultants. Eighty-three external contractors are beavering away at a cost of more than £50,000 a day, which is more than double the original £19 million consultancy contract signed in 2004. Who can manage such a scheme? Not, I suspect, the Home Office. Much of this is based on the fallacious and dangerous notion that someone carrying an ID card with their biometrics on it can easily be proved to be the rightful holder by having their actual biometrics compared with what is on the card chip. Why is that a fallacy? Because any self-respecting terrorist or serious criminal would ensure that the card did indeed carry their biometrics. The only safe check is a central register of biometrics with which the suspect can be compared. One does not need a smart card for that; one needs simply a card with a number linking it to the central register. I have been pursuing the issue of passports through Parliamentary Questions for years. Yet the Government have been wholly complacent until now. Part of the reason for that is the ““not invented here”” attitude of the Home Office, which does not take kindly to suggestions from outside its own tightly closed ranks. It is only recently that any sort of efficient electronic-based passport control on entry has been introduced. Hong Kong, which I know well, has had such control for 15 years. Only yesterday, the Prime Minister told us that electronic control on exit will be introduced, but not until 2009. Terrorists will therefore have a further 18 months to saunter out of the country. That is not good enough. Passports are still being lost in the post between the Identity and Passport Service and the holder. The Government congratulated themselves on the fact that only some 700 passports a year are lost in that way. That is not good enough. In the past 12 months, the Identity and Passport Service has issued more than 300,000 replacement passports for those reported lost or stolen. The Government do not even know how many of the applicants for replacement passports have previously had a passport replaced. That is not good enough. The fees charged for replacing a lost or stolen passport are exactly the same as they are for an ordinary passport, although they should reflect a much more careful process of checking. Although fraudulent applications for passports have been widespread, there were only about 20 prosecutions a year between 2005 and 2006. That is not good enough. Finally, there is no legal obligation for a person who has changed their name to surrender their existing passport until they apply for a replacement. Again, that is not good enough. I have one final point, on air defence. I was last week privileged to be part of a small group from your Lordships’ House who visited RAF Coningsby to look at the air defence system being used to prevent another 9/11-type hijacking. It was extremely impressive. I pay tribute to the Royal Air Force and its Typhoon aircraft—the Eurofighter—and to the way it is being operated. I have, however, one suggestion. The 9/11-type of hijacking is now most unlikely. My worry is that al-Qaeda, which clearly plans to continue this form of terrorism, may well suborn the air crew of a particular airline who would change course at such short notice that it would be virtually impossible to intercept the aircraft. The Government should consider the risk of certain airlines doing that and perhaps make those airlines use Stansted and Gatwick rather than Heathrow so as to keep their aircraft away from the high-profile targets in London that al-Qaeda would really like to attack.