Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2004
MR MARTIN
HALL, COUNCILLOR
GERALD VERNON-JACKSON
AND MRS
JAN BERRY
Q240 Chairman: So your view on this
is coloured very much by the aspiration which you have, which
we will come back to later: that you would have direct access
to the database?
Mr Hall: Not direct access but
indirect access, through credit reference agencies, yes.
Mrs Berry: Our view is that we
need to check people's identity with the technology that is available
at the time. We know there are counterfeit passports; we know
there are counterfeit driving licences. The information we have
is that technology is now available through biometrics would provide
a far more credible and reliable database. We are actually checking
people who will be in front of us, as opposed to the situation
where it might be down a telephone line, where credit reference
and identity need to be confirmed. For us, we have actually got
the individual there.
Q241 Chairman: Mr Vernon-Jackson,
what is the local government view?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: On
the issue of the database our view was that having a single identifier
number was extremely useful, to link together different databases
within government. The hearings we heard gave the impression that
the idea of Big Brother—of different government departments
talking to each other—was not a reality. Everybody operated
their entirely separate systems and so actually having something
that brought together the DWP, National Insurance, the Department
of Health—all those systems and the different ways information
is stored on us—would actually be useful. So we were very
keen on that. We were much less certain about the card. Without
biometrics, we have considerable worries that the card does not
have huge amounts of use—just because of the issue of forgery
or if it can be forged. If we are giving people the impression
that this identity card is a gateway through to everything, then
people have to have trust that it is not forgeable. Without biometrics,
therefore, we would be worried about it. We have worries about
the whole issue of people having to have a card anyway. We are
much less certain about whether the card issue is right, but we
are very keen on the individual identifier number, to be able
to pull together different bits of information about us.
Q242 Chairman: If somebody does not
have a card but they have a number, how do you envisage that being
used in the local government context?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: In
terms of local government we are not sure that there will be a
huge amount of uses, because we do not spend a lot of time checking
people's identity. The real areas for us are about housing benefit
and council tax benefit. There are differences of view about how
much a card would be useful without biometrics. At the moment,
people have to produce a passport or they have to produce driving
licences or else, if they do not have those, a whole range of
other documentation. In terms of benefit fraud, the advice I have
from my officers is that it is unlikely to make a huge amount
of difference. So the card seems much less important to us than
the number that joins together different bits of information that
are already collected about us.
Q243 Chairman: So you are not so
much advocating an identity card as having better handling of
government data and a reference point that links up the information
about different individuals?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Yes.
Q244 Chairman: Perhaps I can ask
the Police Federation this. You say in your evidence that there
are lessons to be learned from systems abroad. Can you tell us
a bit more about what you have in mind? What lessons have you
drawn from international experience?
Mrs Berry: We have spoken to colleagues
throughout Europe, some of the countries have identity cards but
maybe not with biometrics, although I believe that Belgium and
one other country are looking towards digitising some biometrics
at the moment. There are a lot of countries who have identity
cards, who are quite surprised that we even asked the question,
and do not see any difficulties with it. In America and in Australia
we looked at some experience they have had over a period of time
and I believe views have changed, in some respects depending on
the political situation. Certainly in Australia you go back nine
years, when they had a huge debate about the feasibility of identity
cards. It started off being fairly well supported, but then it
got lost in some of the detail, there was a tremendous anti campaign,
and it was lost. In America, probably since 9/11, the views on
identity cards have changed. Certainly, on a European basis, a
lot of our colleagues are questioning why we are even asking the
question. They cannot think of how their job could be done without
having direct access to the identity of the person they are speaking
to.
Q245 Chairman: A final open question
to each of you, so that I am clear. If somebody has a card which,
for the sake of argument, has biometric data on it, how often
do each of you envisage that biometric data being verified—presuming
there is a local reader of some sort, as opposed to somebody simply
offering the card, which may have the information encoded but
which is not readable by an individual person? Mr Hall, you were
talking about people on the telephone who, by definition, cannot
have anybody reading their card. How does any of the data in the
card help identify the person on the telephone with the person
to whom you may be giving a loan?
Mr Hall: Essentially, you would
ask the person what their number was, ask them some details about
themselves, and verify that data against the central record via
a credit reference agency, if that was available. In the case
of face-to-face transactions, of which I do not know the proportion—I
could find out, roughly—if the cost of biometric verification
was cheap enough, then the whole thing would be much more attractive.
I was not saying that we were against it; simply that it was not
essential, given what looks like the cost of checking at the moment.
All in all—and these are very by-and-large numbers—we
think something like 100-150 million identity checks a year are
done through credit reference agencies, of which quite a high
proportion would be without the person being present. But "a
lot" would be the answer, and probably more if a more reliable
system were available.
Mrs Berry: We have hundreds of
thousands of contacts with suspects, victims, offenders, throughout
a year. We would therefore expect there to be some mobile technology
for officers to use on the streets, to prevent having to take
people into police stations for verification of details. Street
bail is now to be available, and so you would need some verification
of people's identity on the street.
Q246 Chairman: Those uses are therefore
highly dependent, are they, on there being this mobile technology?
The simple proffering of a card with a photo on it would not really
deliver what you need.
Mrs Berry: No, a photograph on
its own would be insufficient to verify to the standard we need
to verify. You would need to have biometrics. I would argue that
if you want to have the widest possible use of the card, then
it would need to be more than one biometric on the card.
Q247 Chairman: At the moment, the
Government's plans—I think that your evidence says this,
Mr Vernon-Jackson—do not include the cost of providing local
reader systems, either mobile or fixed. To the extent that you
can envisage using a card, would you see it as needing a lot of
local readers in housing benefit offices, or wherever else?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: It
depends to what use you are going to put the card. I think that
the biometrics make it much more interesting. There are four things
that come to my mind where it could be particularly useful. I
think that it would be crucial in terms of doing housing benefit
and council tax benefit. That means, with local authorities having
one-stop shops spread around their local authority areas, a large
number. There are two other things, however. It depends on what
databases it is linked to. One of the things we could be doing
is having people voting with these, and people able not just to
vote in their polling station but effectively to vote anywhere—because
it is all connected through a central computer. Also, if the Department
of Health are talking about having centralised medical records,
then it would be very useful for social services to be able, when
doing an assessment of somebody and carrying out a home visit,
to access people's medical records. It could mean that the social
services' assessment of what people's needs are would be much
more accurate and also tie in with what the doctors are prescribing
for those people. Again, as with the police, that means large
numbers of handheld, portable readers which are able to connect
into a central system, and where we are able to read what is held
on a whole range of different databases.
Q248 Chairman: Can we move on to
the creation of the central database? By the way, if any of you
feel that some of these questions are beyond your own organisation's
technical expertise, that is fine, because we will be having a
range of witnesses. I just wonder whether any of you have any
particular views on the key things that should be taken into account
in trying to create a reliable central database.
Mr Hall: We felt that none of
the available ones was, of itself, sufficient to be able to do
that. That is by definition. Otherwise we would not be looking
at the problem. The DVLA has a reasonably reliable database, but
not reliable enough. There are clearly far more National Insurance
numbers in issue than there are people who are eligible to have
them. There is something that has gone wrong there. We felt—but
probably with a lot of reservations, because it is far from complete—that
the electoral roll was probably the place to start. Building on
whatever there was, however, including credit reference agency
data—which is often more up to date than official records,
but also DVLA, passports, and whatever other databases presented
themselves. It would be a painstaking task at the beginning, however,
to get the degree of accuracy that you would want in order to
feel confident.
Q249 Chairman: You have made the
point, which I think the Government accept, that the existing
records of the DVLA and the Passport Agency are not sufficiently
good to rely purely on those as the raw material for the new database.
Do you have any worries about those two agencies being the main
issuing bodies of the new identity cards in the future, assuming
that they are relying on a different database?
Mr Hall: I do not think that we
do, no. I am assuming that there is access to the necessary technology,
and we would be perfectly able to cope with it. I do not see how
you would do it otherwise than by this sort of gradualist approach
of those two routes, perhaps plus a new route of people who simply
apply for a card. I think that you need to use all channels to
assemble the database in the very first place.
Q250 Chairman: Do any of the three
of you have particular views about how the process of registering
an individual on the database should be handled? Obviously you
have to match a particular person and their biometrics with the
central database and this other information. Do you have any particular
thoughts about how that should be handled? The LGA have suggested
that might be handled more at local level than on a central database.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: And
I think that we would be happy to offer our services in terms
of collecting that data, because people will have to come in,
to be seen, so that the biometrics can be sampled, or whatever.
If we are being honest, if this debate is being driven by issues
of national security and issues around people being in the UK
who should not be in the UK, we are actually talking about trying
to target people at the very margins of society. None of the databases
that we have really address that issue. The electoral register
may be 85 to 90% accurate but, if the push is coming in terms
of trying to identify those 10%, then almost none of our databases
work. We would be happy for the electoral register to be used
as a basis, but it is how you find those 10% and then track those
10% of people, who are the people who will often move very frequently,
who will not have records, and all of those problems. I am sure
that we would be happy to volunteer our services, therefore. We
have offices everywhere, but it is a real issue in terms of the
number of cards that will have to be issued each year on the electoral
register—even excluding those 10% of people. In London,
40% change address every year. In Southampton, 25% change every
year. That is a huge number of cards that would have to be reissued—and
that is only having to register once a year. With people who are
serially moving, it will be an extremely difficult process to
make sure that things are accurate.
Q251 Mrs Dean: Can I turn to you
first, Mr Vernon-Jackson? Could you say a little more about when
local authorities currently check identity? You have mentioned
housing benefit. Do local authorities currently ask for proof
of identification when, say, children are registered at school?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: We
do a range of different things. Identity is checked in different
ways, according to different things. When somebody registers to
be a member of the library, we will ask for an identification,
and whatever. But, if we are honest, we are not going to spend
huge amounts of time doing it. If somebody runs off with some
library books, it is unfortunate, but people do not often do it
and, anyway, it does not cost huge amounts of money. So you go
through a range of different things. The issue that we have all
felt is the most difficult is where there are large amounts of
public money involved. That is where the housing benefit aspect
comes in. That is where I think our main interest in this would
be. We do £40-£50 million worth of housing benefit in
Portsmouth every year, and that is a huge amount of public money.
There is a range of things, therefore: libraries at one end; housing
benefit at the other, where we will spend much more time with
the DWP verification framework, trying to make sure that everybody
is right. If the truth be known—I do not have kids and I
have never done education—I do not know whether we ask people
for identification when kids register for school. I know that
the Department of Education are looking for each child to have
a pupil number, to track them through life. I do not know much
more detail than that. I am sorry; I am no expert on it.
Q252 Mrs Dean: Do you agree with
the Information Commissioner that there are some services for
which ID cards should not be used if they were introduced? Would
libraries be a good example?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: We
have developed our own series of smart cards for people in local
authority areas, where people effectively have local authority
identity cards. It looks as if our cards have some services that
will not be available on the national cards. For instance, we
have the ability to have an e-purse on it, so that people can
charge up their card with money and, if you get on a bus, it will
buy your bus ticket; it will pay your library fines for you; it
will pay for you to go to the swimming pool; it will pay for you
to park your car. That level of smart card technology, as I understand
it, is not what the Government are looking at. It looks as if
we will run our own parallel system, therefore, even when this
comes out. They may be of some use. Because the options on it
do not give us the chance of being able to carry on some of those
things, it will not be a huge amount of use for us in identifying
people for things like library cards.
Q253 Mrs Dean: So you still see the
existing local smart cards continuing?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
that we would not be averse to having the two merged but, having
spent the time and effort to create things where we are trying
to move, for a lot of services, away from a cash economy into
a smart card economy, I think that we would be very loath to lose
that—just because it is so convenient for lots of services
and lots of people.
Q254 Mrs Dean: You have told us that
you have not been involved in any discussions about the services
councils provide. What consultation would you like to see?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: When
we had our hearings, different groups of people came to talk to
us about the issues around civil liberties, housing benefits,
the technology that we currently operate as local councils. That
was useful. The issue we would like explored more is how it will
affect the people who may be perceived as being at the margins
of society. We drew two people. If I were a middle-aged, white
lady living on the Isle of Wight, then I would not actually be
asked for my card very often. If I am young, male, black, and
living in Brixton, then the perception is that I would be asked
to prove identity much more frequently. I think that we have real
worries about what that does for community cohesion, especially
as this has been brought up with the idea that we are looking
at national security and people who are illegal immigrants. I
think that we would want much more consultation—and I am
sure you are doing it—with members of those groups of society
who are perceived as being on the edge of society, about what
effect this card is likely to have and if, in effect, it becomes
compulsory for people to carry it. If you are young, male, black,
and live in Brixton, and you are stopped, asked for it, and do
not have it, if this is about national security and people being
illegal immigrants, the police are not going to say, "Can
you go and collect it, and bring it to the police station within
seven days and show it to us?". They are going to say, "You
have to produce it now". Otherwise, the whole point of it
from the national security point of view is useless. I think that
is where our concern mainly rests—in the community cohesion
issue.
Q255 Janet Anderson: Mr Vernon-Jackson,
perhaps I could ask you a brief supplementary. You particularly
referred to the amount of public money that is spent on housing
benefit in your area alone. Do you think that the introduction
of identity cards would help local authorities to reduce the incidence
of housing benefit fraud?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: The
advice I have from my housing benefit people in Portsmouth is
that they do not see that, without biometrics, it will be of much
additional use, because of the ability to create forgeries. With
biometrics, there may be some use. The advice from my colleagues
in Smith Square is different. They think that it would help to
reduce it; but I prefer to trust the people on the front line
in Portsmouth who are actually handing the money out. There is
more of an issue about organised fraud, large-scale fraud, through
landlords, where identity is actually not the issue. It may have
an effect on housing benefit fraud, but I do not think that it
will solve the problem.
Q256 Mrs Dean: What lessons do you
think there are for central government, from your experience of
service provision by local government?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
that having smart card technology is very useful. If we are going
to go down this route, I think that we are disappointed that it
looks as if it is such a low-technology card and will not enable
local providers to be able to access databases, to save some of
the hassle that people have continuously to go through, filling
in forms and having to re-reveal information. The social services-health
interface seems to us a particularly important issue.
Q257 Mrs Dean: So you would like
a high-tech card?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Yes.
Q258 Mrs Dean: Then you could get
rid of your local ones.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
that some people would love to keep their own cards. Bracknell
are very proud of their cards. But I think there is benefit in
saying that people should have to carry as few bits of plastic
as possible. With having to have a different driving licence card
to a passport card because of the problem of the placement of
photos—people look as if they will have to carry several
of these. So why make life more complicated for people?
Q259 David Winnick: Are you dissatisfied,
Mr Hall, with the present arrangements as far as security is concerned
about lending money and other financial arrangements made by the
various companies which make up your organisation?
Mr Hall: How do you mean? Are
we concerned about fraud?
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