Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2004
MR MARTIN
HALL, COUNCILLOR
GERALD VERNON-JACKSON
AND MRS
JAN BERRY
Q280 Mr Prosser: Do you think that
agencies like the police should have access to that database?
Mr Hall: They do have access to
that database.
Q281 Mr Prosser: With or without
the knowledge of the individual?
Mr Hall: I would have to confirm
the answer to that question.
Q282 Chairman: You can write to us
afterwards. That would be helpful.
Mr Hall: Yes, I will do that.[1]
Q283 Mr Prosser: Mr Vernon-Jackson,
you talked about bringing the database a little closer to home,
perhaps allowing local authorities to administer it. What is your
thinking? In non-unitary authorities are you talking about shire
counties or district councils? Why would that be better for the
individual?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
that there are several issues. One of the issues is around people's
fear about central government and the use they would put it to;
and they are slightly less frightened of us than they are of you—because
we are nicer and we just collect the rubbish, and things like
that. So people may be happier about giving us local information.
Also, people are more used to coming into offices within their
local towns, or whatever. It is probably something that would
need to be done at county, unitary and met—London borough—level.
District councils may be able to do some of the collecting but
not holding of data, I expect, just because some of the district
councils are really very small in terms of their staffing levels.
There would need to be discussion about whether the work that
local authorities could do would be about collecting information,
collecting data and collecting biometrics on people, and then
accessing centrally held data, or whether the data would be held
locally. I think that there are arguments on both sides, if I
am honest.
Q284 Mr Prosser: I will not argue
with you over the issue of whether the individual trusts local
government or national government more or less, but do you not
think that there is the other argument: that people would be more
relaxed about having all this information, this access, at a central
level rather than a chap round the corner, who might be known
to you?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
that there are arguments on both sides. There is an argument that
says that the stuff which is held centrally in London will not
be able to be accessed by people you know, but there is also then
the fear of what central government might do with that in terms
of people's privacy and the fear of the Big Brother of government.
What we would mainly be able to do, and the skill that we have,
is about the collecting of data and verifying people's biometrics
and so on, and issuing cards or whatever—just because we
have offices all round local authority areas.
Q285 Mr Prosser: But could that not
be a problem with security as well? So many offices, so many councils,
and so many opportunities for leakage of security?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: In
terms of collecting data, if the aim, as I understand the Home
Office's aim, is to try to look at national security issues and
issues of illegal immigration, and so it is about being able to
identify those people—those 10% of people we do not collect
on other databases—it seems to me that you have to make
it as easy as possible for people to be able to come and give
information, when they are moving, about who they are, et cetera,
and reissue cards with new addresses. You will have to make it
extremely easy. That is where the large number of offices, connected
through the internet, would be useful. The decision about whether
the data should be held locally or centrally, now that computers
have the ability to talk to each other, is probably less of an
important issue—just because people can exchange information
so quickly between different computers.
Q286 Mr Prosser: You reminded us
in your earlier evidence today that something like 40% of the
population of London moves every year.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: That
is 40% on the electoral register, and we know that we do not by
any means hit everybody on the electoral register. So it is probably
a higher proportion.
Q287 Mr Prosser: So on that basis
of a locally controlled database you would, in some areas, be
changing nearly half of those identities and their stats every
year?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Yes.
It is a vast operation, but if this is what central government
asks us to do, I am sure we will help as much as we can, as long
as there is the money to do it.
Mr Prosser: Leave it to us.
Q288 Chairman: Could I follow that
point by asking—and this is a very naïve question,
obviously—how essential is the address information on the
database, compared with the other elements of identification?
I am presumably John Denham, whether I am living at my current
address or a different one, and could be identified by a biometric.
What is the essential reason why we must have an up-to-date address
on the card?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I do
not want people claiming housing benefit in more than one address.
Mrs Berry: Clearly we need to
know where people are coming from and where we can get in contact
with them in the future. I recognise that the address part is
probably the part which will need changing more often than anything
else—which is where the cost comes in.
Q289 Chairman: There is a difficulty
in getting these addresses up to date, which is the problem of
getting people to register for the electoral register and so on.
Do they invalidate the reasons for the card? If people are carrying
cards whose addresses were not necessarily up to date, would that
matter? Presumably with housing benefit one can simply say, "If
your card is not up to date, you are not going to be able to claim
housing benefit on your new address". So you could sort of
force compliance. With people on the streets, the police cannot
necessarily.
Mrs Berry: It does not invalidate
the parts around identity theft, where that takes place. The address
is not the all-important part of identity theft. I think that
it goes back to the point you were making earlier on. We are dealing
very often with the very edges here. 90% of the people would be
quite happy to carry it; they would be quite happy to update it.
It is the people who fall into that other 5 to 10%, who are more
likely to be moving around and who are more likely not to turn
up when they should do for bail, or court, or something else.
The address will be more important for those than probably for
the other people.
Q290 Bob Russell: I will put the
first question to the Police Federation, continuing with the cost
theme. Any critics of ID cards have argued that they are not cost-effective
and that the money could be better spent on, for example, the
police. What is your response to the argument of those who say
we should spend more money on the police and not on ID cards?
Mrs Berry: We are always very
grateful for any money that is spent on us. Police officers on
the street are really important but they also need technology
to assist them to do their job. We do need to check that the people
we have in front of us are the right people. So police officers
are important, but you need to be able to check identity as well.
Q291 Bob Russell: The next question
is to Mr Vernon-Jackson. You have mentioned the cost to local
authorities of being able to access the central database. In your
view, what would be an acceptable level? Incidentally, I should
point out that, in Colchester, I am trusted.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I am
sure you are, Bob. If this is about a database that is about saving
public money, then I would expect that central government would
allow us access for free. For instance, housing benefit money
is passed down from central government and then given out via
local authorities. So I would expect there to be resistance to
a fee per use. I would expect this to be a project which is trying
to save public money, irrespective of whether it is central government
money or local authority money. In some councils 75% of the money
they spend comes from central government anyway, in terms of grant.
So if you are going to ask us to pay for every time we use it,
you are just recycling money back to central government that originally
came to you, and you would have to give us a bigger grant in the
first place. What we would ask for would be a free system for
public good.
Q292 Bob Russell: Surely nowadays
local government is merely a branch office of central government
anyway?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: In
some things it is undoubtedly true that we are an agency for central
government, but there are some discretions still allowed by central
government in terms of things that we provide. I am sure that
local people value the fact that in some places—in Colchester—you
may choose to do something differently than in Southampton, and
that would reflect the needs, aspirations and wishes of your local
communities.
Q293 Bob Russell: In terms of exchange
of financial information and public information, you have indicated
that it is all public money. Could you not argue that, in the
same way as Barclays Bank does not expect its branches—at
least I assume they do not—to pay for information they get
from their central database, in local government you should not
be expected to pay for the central charges of central government?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I am
happy to argue that.
Q294 Bob Russell: There is no fee
for that advice! My final question is to Mr Hall. How much would
you be prepared to pay to be able to verify identity through an
ID card scheme?
Mr Hall: I have not asked my members,
who would of course be the people who pay. The fact is that you
would hope that the credit reference agencies would have less
work and less difficult work to do to create the databases, and
they should therefore be able to charge less to their customers,
leaving some saving. You would hope too that there would be less
fraud and therefore less loss through fraud and less work on detecting
fraud. So there should be some savings to the industry. There
are 100-150 million checks, we reckon. I guess you would be talking
about a small number of pence per use, provided that payment was
accepted by industry at large. I think that if there was a pattern
of paying for use of the database, our industry would be part
of that and there would be some revenue from it. At the same time,
the database would be quite heavily dependent on use of the databases
the credit reference agencies themselves gathered. So they would
be able to give quid pro quo there. I would expect that we would
be contributors to the cost.
Q295 Bob Russell: You have mentioned
the very large number of checks that are being made already. How
many ID card readers do you think your members require and, in
total, the state would need for all its outlets for which they
would need ID checks?
Mr Hall: I was reserving our position
on card readers. If it was a very simple matter—something
like a credit card reader—probably most outlets would have
them. If the UV lights are anything to go by, we distributed 28,000
to motor dealers, who are all in the process—
Q296 Bob Russell: If I may just interrupt
you, the whole object of these identity cards is that they are
going to be biometric. They are going to scan the iris, they are
going to have a fingerprint. That is not a simple checker.
Mr Hall: But whether individual
businesses felt it worth their while to have biometric readers
would depend on the cost of doing that. It is a simple cost issue.
Q297 Bob Russell: Perhaps I could
press this. Has your organisation thought about how many checkers
it will need?
Mr Hall: We have not got into
that degree of consultation, because we do not yet know what sort
of thing it will be. I imagine the people who handle a high volume
of queries might well find it worth having checkers; but whether
every garage and every shop that issued a loan did would be a
matter of cost.
Q298 Chairman: Could I follow that
up with the Police Federation? NAFIS, the on-line fingerprint
recognition scheme, has cost tens of millions of pounds and is
not yet available in every single police station. You suggested
earlier that the police would need operationally some form of
handheld or at least mobile devices to check the biometrics. Does
the technology for that currently exist and, secondly, do we know
what the cost of providing that in an effective operational form
would be?
Mrs Berry: The answer to the first
part, I am told, is yes, it does. I believe there are a variety
of trial schemes.
Q299 Chairman: Is this based on fingerprints
or the iris scan?
Mrs Berry: Both, is my understanding.
The cost of it is not within my knowledge. I think that the iris
has not been tried and tested in this country although, to my
knowledge, it has been in other countries. The fingerprint part,
as I understand it, even going down to a nightclub in Essex has
been extremely successful. The other example we put in our evidence
was in north Somerset, where it is combined with pin numbers to
assist identification. So my understanding is that the technology
is there. To fit it into some of the mobile data machines that
the service has currently would not be difficult. I think that
the difficult part is the co-ordination and the compatibility
of the whole system.
1 See Ev 188-190. Back
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