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Mr. Blunkett: I have to work with the best advice available and currently it would be extraordinary if even the most sophisticated criminals could duplicate identities in the way that has been described. We are not simply talking about duplicating what is on the chip, but what is on the database. When the card is presented, what is read on the screen must accord with what is on the database. If it does not match, that person is automatically disqualified.
Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak): My right hon. Friend will be aware that the kind of totalitarian state envisaged by George Orwell does not spring up overnight. He needs to proceed cautiously with this venture. In what way did the consultation on entitlement cards inform the decisions that he has told us about in the statement today?
Mr. Blunkett: We consulted for a year. We had a lot of local consultation, including using local radio and local newspapers. One of the reasons why we now describe the card as an ID card is precisely that public opinion showed that people were clear about what that term means and that they prefer it to the term, "entitlement card". We also undertook focus groups across the country, all of which, whatever their ethnicity and socio-economic make-up, produced the same level of support and very similar questions.
Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham): Does the Home Secretary acknowledge the criticism made by his colleague, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, who has pointed to the extreme technological sophistication of the information technology that would be required and the fact that the National Audit Office says that only 30 per cent. of such systems have ever succeeded in the past? What assurances has the right hon. Gentleman had from those in the IT industry that they can make the system operate other than at vast cost to the taxpayer?
Mr. Blunkett: We now have an entirely new process in place. The Office of Government Commerce undertakes gateway reviews. We have been through a pre-zero gateway review already—we would not have reached this stage without doing so—and we will go to the next stage of the gateway review and clearance in January. We will not proceed—this will need to be done in parallel with the Bill—to set up the system until the further stage has been gone through later next year and we are satisfied, both internally and from external verification, that the scheme can and will work. We will have to do that to introduce biometrics in passports. My hon. Friend the Minister for Citizenship and Immigration will shortly announce a pilot programme for biometrics in passports, just as we have already begun a pilot programme for biometrics in visas.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central): Is it not axiomatic that those on the left should defend the welfare state? Does the Home Secretary agree that no welfare state can be sustainable unless it prescribes and defines those who are entitled to its services? Can he give any indication or estimate of the number of people or the cost to the health service of people using it who are not entitled to do so?
Mr. Blunkett: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, who helpfully joined us earlier, for which I was grateful to him, is undertaking such work. He and I believe that we could be talking about hundreds of millions rather tens of millions of pounds. We know of no way, nor did the Opposition until today, to protect us from the misuse of those free services other than to have a form of identification that entitles people to use them by dint of being citizens of this country, not for another reason. Given that we have the only free health service in the world, such a system would be a major safeguard against those who would want to erode the health service and those who would use any excuse to encourage people to be against that free service. Such a system would ensure that we protect the health service from those who misuse it.
Angela Watkinson (Upminster): Identity cards would be very effective in controlling those law-abiding people who volunteer to have them and who hold legal driving licences and passports, but those people do not need identifying and controlling. The challenge is to control criminals and those people who are in this country illegally, so how will the Home Secretary overcome the problem of fraudulently held cards and those people who hold no cards at all and who work cash in hand?
Mr. Blunkett: There are two reasons why the full benefits cannot be attained without compulsion. The crucial issue is not presenting a card, but verifying the identity on the database. Someone could pretend to be someone else, but they could not do so once the card had been swiped and their identity had been shown to be false on the database. That is the crucial difference, and I will clearly have to explain it time and again over the years ahead. This is not a photograph on an old-fashioned card, but the ability to use a database—as with credit cards, loyalty cards and a plethora of commercially available cards, which often do not have the safeguards that we are talking about—to identify
whether people are who they say they are, and those who believe that the commercial sector should not be doing that need to say so.
Brian White (Milton Keynes, North-East): The Home Secretary will be aware, as his earlier responses show, that the commercial sector is developing schemes to link identity to uniqueness. Given the history of leading-edge technology not delivering the objectives set, will he give an assurance that he will work with the private sector in considering authentication standards and that he will consider a dispersed system, rather than a single database, which, once breached, is the least secure form of database?
Mr. Blunkett: Now that we have agreed the principle and I have reported to Parliament, we can open serious discussions with the commercial sector in relation not simply to the justified safeguards to which my hon. Friend refers, but to the commercial possibilities for Britain in being ahead of the game worldwide, as other countries rapidly move to adopt similar systems. If we can do that, we will have a double gain of protecting our people, while promoting our economic and trade interests.
Mr. Henry Bellingham (North-West Norfolk): The Home Secretary has said a great deal about driving licences and passports, but what about other official forms of ID, such as military identification cards, Government passes and MPs' passes? Can they not be configured so that they can contain biometric data?
Mr. Blunkett: Yes they can, which is why the Secretary of State for Defence is so strongly in favour of the proposals and has been helpfully supportive of me in the consultation process.
Mr. Frank Field (Birkenhead): As a third of all taxpayers' money goes in supporting the social security budget, does the Home Secretary accept that that budget above all others offers the richest pickings to those gangs specialising in identity fraud? Will he therefore give us some idea of when he expects the Government to be able to introduce the first ever secure gateway to our benefits system? That will not only give huge financial gains—perhaps enough to pay for this programme—but increase substantially the support for the welfare state that already exists in the country because taxpayers will know that their taxes are going where they should go.
Mr. Blunkett: I accept entirely the principle enunciated by my right hon. Friend. People will want that security. I cannot give an exact date, partly because of the issues that have been raised this afternoon, but not by my right hon. Friend. It is very strange that the people, including those in the press, who have berated me for being too slow ask all the types of question rightly asked this afternoon that indicate that we have to take our time to get it right. Starting now allows us to be ahead of the game; starting in five years' time would take
us five years down a road on which we would have to adopt all the same careful steps that I am enunciating this afternoon.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): Given the issues involved and the difficult compromises between civil liberties and effectiveness in tackling benefit fraud and so on, would it not be appropriate for the proposals to be decided on a free vote in the House?
Mr. Blunkett: At the moment, I have not got round to the nature of the voting pattern, but I am delighted to say that I will have with me a number of Opposition Members—Front Benchers, as well as Back Benchers—if we have a free vote. I have mentioned two of them this afternoon: the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe and the hon. Member for Bromsgrove. I am encouraged that, with all sorts of doubts and concerns, Labour Back Benchers are united today in believing that we need to move to a modern era, to take on the challenge of the future. That is very encouraging indeed.
Mr. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey): As the House knows, I have an interest in technology, although I am not a technologist. There are 80 million cellphones in the United Kingdom, with 80 per cent. coverage—much more than passports or driving licences. Can biometrics be used in cellphones? Will my right hon. Friend consider that as a way to add to the identity system?
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