Uncorrected Evidence 122

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1222-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

HOME AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

THE WORK OF THE HOME OFFICE

Tuesday 2 November 2004

RT HON MR DAVID BLUNKETT MP, MR DESMOND BROWNE MP and MR JOHN GIEVE CB

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 62

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Home Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 2 November 2004

Members present

Mr John Denham, in the Chair

Janet Anderson

Mr James Clappison

Mrs Janet Dean

Mr Damian Green

Mr Gwyn Prosser

Bob Russell

Mr Marsha Singh

Mr John Taylor

David Winnick

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Rt Hon Mr David Blunkett, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr Desmond Browne, a Member of the House, Minister of State, and Mr John Gieve CB, Permanent Secretary, Home Office, examined.

Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, Home Secretary, Minister, Mr Gieve. Thank you for coming to give evidence. I do not know if you want to say anything by way of introduction, Home Secretary. If not, we will go straight into the questions.

Mr Blunkett: I think, given the difficulty of the disruption, I am very happy to go straight into questions, Chairman, thank you.

Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much indeed. Can we start by looking at the resources that are available to the Department following the Comprehensive Spending Review? The Home Office budget is due to go up by 2.7% per annum over the next four years, a fairly substantial increase. It will go up by Ł2.2 billion. At the same time, though, you have to achieve nearly Ł2 billion worth of savings, efficiency savings, over the same period of time. Can you clarify for the Committee whether you get the increase in cash, and then anything on top of that you achieve in efficiency savings is extra, or whether you have to get the efficiency savings out to have any growth at all?

Mr Blunkett: Two-thirds of that Ł1.9 billion is cashable savings and is built into the presumptions of our additional spend over and above the amounts we have been allocated from the Spending Review; in other words, I think it Ł3 billion including capital - there is .6 billion of capital as well - over the three‑year period. Therefore, our spending proposals and our profile of what we are doing over the next three years is predicated on being able to make those cashable savings. The remaining third, John Gieve will correct me if I am wrong, is presumed in terms of the Treasury itself. So that is the way it has always worked and that is the way it is working. Is that right?

Mr Gieve: Yes, the non‑cashable savings are the ones which come through in extra effectiveness. So, for example, if we switch policemen from back office duties into the front‑line, that will be measured as part of the increase in effectiveness but it will not release cash. All of that is, in principle, on top of the figures we have got out of the Spending Review.

Mr Blunkett: In other words, it is productivity gains. For instance, in the example that John has given, we are presuming over the three years that we will be able to get the equivalent of 12,000 police officers onto the streets as well as the expansion in community support and wardens.

Q3 Chairman: But the bulk, as you say, of the Ł2 billion efficiency savings needs to be achieved in order to be able to spend to the levels that you have set out. If you were not able to achieve those efficiency savings, what parts of the Department would come under greatest pressure?

Mr Blunkett: Some of it is productivity gains, some of it is direct savings that are offset against the totality of the budget: immigration/nationality is one area. Des Browne can comment on this if he wishes. We are presuming that we will be able to make quite substantial savings, having reduced asylum claims by 70%. Therefore, we will be able to profile the spend on IMD over the next three years downwards by Ł450 million.

Q4 Chairman: I understand part at least of where you are aiming to make the savings, but, if you were not able to make the savings, which part of your budget would be most at risk?

Mr Blunkett: Those parts that would be open to pressures that we have no control over, and obviously immigration, nationality and border controls is one of them. Whilst we have got a very substantial uplift in prison and probation's record levels of investment, clearly we are predicating what we are doing on the 80,000 figure for prisons on the very sensible balance that we are now achieving between tough community sentences and rigorous prison sentences, and that is working. The figure today is just under 75,000, 74,800, and is therefore on track to be able to achieve that, but if there was a complete change in that profile, for instance if sentencing guidelines changed dramatically in terms of particular parts of the criminal justice system, then that would have a dramatic impact.

Q5 Chairman: How much of the saving that you have to achieve to meet the Chancellors' targets will be achieved by the reduction in 2,700 full‑time posts that you are aiming to achieve?

Mr Blunkett: A very substantial amount is predicated on that and on the transfer of staff out of London and the South East, which is mainly, of course, the development of the new Offender Management Service and the transfer of the headquarters. John, do you want to comment on the precise relationship between the two?

Mr Gieve: The reduction in our newly defined administration costs is, I think, about 100 million a year by the third year, and that contributes to the Ł2 billion target, but it is a significant amount but only a minority.

Q6 Chairman: Can you give us more detail about where those 2,700 are coming from? I am not entirely clear. Home Secretary, you have mentioned IMD as an area for savings. Where is the rest going to come?

Mr Blunkett: Headquarters staff in what will be, from early next year, Marsham Street and the run down in the overheads and the administrative back up staff ‑ 2,200, I think - Home Office.

Mr Gieve: Yes, overall the 2,700 is a fair percent reduction on, if you like, the headquarters total and then a 25% reduction in the headquarters of the Prison Service and the headquarters of IMD ‑ so that is what makes it up ‑ and it is very slightly more in the headquarters and IMD in total numbers than the prison service.

Q7 Chairman: We understand that the figures given, and I realise that the base‑line may have changed, were that there were 8,712 Home Office staff in headquarters in 1998/1999. There are now 18,497. So, even if there is a reduction of 2,700 in civil servants, that would still seem to leave the Home Office with 7,000 more civil servants in three years time than there were in 1998/1999. Are those figures correct, firstly?

Mr Blunkett: They are not in terms of the profile, because, of course, the National Probation Service was created and therefore transferred into the figures.

Q8 Chairman: That is how many staff?

Mr Blunkett: We have got 14,000 in total, but some of those presumably are not counted.

Mr Gieve: From the figures, which are probably drawn from our report, Home Office Central covers the whole of IMD - so it covers all our staff at the ports, airports, and so on, and all our asylum case-workers - and by far the biggest increase within that total has come in that. So our headquarters numbers ‑ that is not really a headquarters number, that is a headquarters plus one of our operational businesses.

Q9 Mr Green: Home Secretary, could we move on to PSA targets and how much difference they actually make to people in their daily lives. We have approximately 12 million offences committed in this country. Your target is for 1.25 million of those to be brought to justice. In the end that would mean an annual increase of 32,000. 32,000 out of 12 million seems pretty insignificant really?

Mr Blunkett: We are talking about... I am not entirely familiar with the 32,000 figure that you have enunciated. 1.25 over what we had previously achieved on a reducing total is, in my view, real progress. Where do you get the 32,000?

Q10 Mr Green: It is the average annual increase.

Mr Blunkett: Oh, the average annual increase. I accept that.

Q11 Mr Green: You think that in the end that is not a very ambitious target?

Mr Blunkett: I think it is a manageable one. I think the overall target is to reduce crime by 15%. Obviously that is a starting point in terms of the negotiations with both the local forces and the Criminal Justice Board. We have talked to the police authorities about this and they believe that they can do better than that. So, starting from a reduction in crime, then going forward in reassurance and actual reduction in the pressure on the service and then improving the delivery of justice, both its speeds and effectiveness - I think they need to be taken together - this is the actual number brought to justice by 2007 rather than actually what we are doing overall.

Q12 Mr Green: Clearly you are right to concentrate on your main PSA target to reduce crime by 15%. Obviously just going for a volume reduction like that does create a natural bias towards the high volume crime, rather than, thankfully, low volume crime, like violent crime, which obviously, you will be aware, is a source of huge worry to people. Do you think that the targets might create an unfortunate bias against that dealing with the crimes that people think of, rightly, as most dangerous?

Mr Blunkett: No, I do not, for this reason. Because there has been such an enormous percentage reduction in the signal crimes, in the crimes that were at the top of the agenda a decade ago ‑ burglary, vehicle crime and, more recently, robbery ‑ because there has been such a very big drop in those areas, the room for manoeuvre in further reductions is limited at 42%, using your 12 million figure - 42% on burglary, 40% on vehicle crime, just under 25% on robbery over the last two years. Those figures mean that the police and their partners, because we are putting a lot of emphasis now that the police are not the sole delivers in terms of crime reduction, but the pressure has to be elsewhere, and it is partly reflected in the debate that we have seen about anti‑social behaviour, partly about low-level violence and thuggery that previously was not recorded and therefore was not a focal point, was not an intention and focus of police activity, and in doing that we are making a rod for our backs, but we are actually tackling things, as you rightly say, that concern people most, which is what is happening to them with violence to the person as opposed to the effect on property.

Q13 Mr Green: One of the issues with all these targets is, of course, the statistics on which they are based. As a new member of this Committee and new to this field, I feel entitled to ask at least one completely stupid question, which is, when you see that we have two different ways of measuring crime and that governments and ministers successively choose the one that is most convenient, is it really impossible to have a measure of crime which covers the crimes that people care about and on which attention can be focused, on which, we can all agree, it does seem a hugely unprofitable part of the debate that we argue about which type of measurement is the most useful every year?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, I agree entirely that it is unprofitable, and I think if everyone drew breath and accepted that we are measuring two different things, but we do need to, for different reasons, and that we are transparent about that, then we would get somewhere. I have always acknowledged that whilst the British Crime Survey has to be and has been accepted for 23 years as the most effective and transparent measure - and you yourself used the BCS figures in relation to the number of crimes as opposed to the recorded crime, which is half the number that you quoted - even those of us who accept that this year on year has been the same methodology, has measured the same types of crime, we have also acknowledged that, firstly, it did not cover everything because it did not cover commercial crime and changes in that direction, which we will remedy by having separate statistical surveys, but, of course, it did not reflect the actual measurement of those crimes that are recorded and, therefore, were acted upon by the police, firstly, because it could not and, secondly, because it has included crimes that the police never did record and therefore never took action on. So the recorded crime statistics, which were updated in 1998 and then again from 2001 when the Association of Chief Police Officers brought in the new crime recording standard, actually now measure activity that previously was not acknowledged. Therefore, it is useful for them as a management tool and for us, the public, in holding them to account to be able to get them to follow through on those activities, like the low-level thuggery and the Friday and Saturday night binge drinking which previously would never have appeared in the statistics. I do not think there is anything to worry about in terms of having those two different but complementary measures, and I think government just has to be big enough to be able to publish both and to argue its case. Of course it will be distorted ‑ oppositions are oppositions, if I might say so ‑ and there is no hurt taken in terms of the opposition trying to do a job of work on picking and choosing just like governments do. What really hurts is when very senior journalists write about these things in a distorted way when in their hearts they know better.

Q14 Mr Green: You mentioned commercial crime just as an aside. Do we know how many retail crimes there are in this country?

Mr Blunkett: We have a survey at the moment, which will be published within a few weeks, in relation to retail crime. We have been working with the British Retail Consortium about this and, of course, we had an initiative which began four years ago in terms of big investment in CCTV, in measures of security in shopping precincts and the like. One of the ironies, and I think we may come to this later on, Chairman, is that the more you actually have a sophisticated technological approach to registering what is taking place in these areas, and the system of number plate recognition is one which I will come to later, you actually are picking up crime in a way that you were not able to before. So we will now be able to measure what is happening in a much more realistic sense ‑‑

Q15 Mr Green: Which must be the thing. Incidentally, the Crime in Society Foundation report that there has been so much discussion about, making the point that you make that the British Crime Surveys omits a lot of crimes, indeed, the one crime that probably attracted most public attention, the terrible shooting of Danielle Beckham, would not have appeared in the British Crime Survey. Are you as confident as you always have been that the British Crime Survey is the most useful and accurate survey that you should be using?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, and Richard Garside, the Director of the Crime in Society Foundation, actually said so in his letter to the Guardian on 13th October. He said, "I argue that the BCS offers a far more accurate picture of the crimes it measures than do police figures", which, of course, is recorded crime. On things like gun crime, we have specific recording which records actual rather than perceived, which can, by the nature of the crime itself, actually determine whether that is going up or down. Tragically, and I am in Nottingham myself on Thursday and Friday, the terrible death of a child raises in people's minds the belief that deaths from gun crime have suddenly risen, whereas actually, as we know, they have fallen. Deaths from gun crime have fallen. That is what I said. People would disagree with me.

Q16 Mr Green: If I can ask one more question before my colleague comes in. I thought the most interesting part of the Crime in Society Foundation report was the idea that focusing on persistent offenders, which is an essential part of the strategy, is a reassuring myth, to use the phrase they use. What that means is that we concentrate on offences that are prioritised by the criminal justice system based on information about those convicted rather than those who actually commit it. Do you think that there is some merit in that, that actually we may all be operating under a reassuring myth about persistent offenders?

Mr Blunkett: No, on that I disagree with this pressure group operation. Even if it were true that we concentrate on those we catch, the Prolific Offenders Programme would make sense both in terms of directing resources but also in terms of protecting the public, because by the very nature of the prolific offending, whether they were easy to catch or not, they have committed large numbers of crime. We had one example in Leeds where catching one individual burglar reduced crime in the area by 80%, partly because he had a very limited view of how far he should travel to commit the burglary. He did all of them in a two-mile radius, which, from his point of view, was bound to end, in the end, in capture, but it was a great gain for the community. If we can concentrate, as we are doing, on the ‑ I think we have now got registered 6,700 prolific offenders and if we can concentrate joint resources on them, everybody is going to gain.

Q17 Chairman: Can you be sure, Home Secretary, you are not concentrating on people like that last individual who fall into the stupid and incompetent category of regular criminals as opposed to the people who rarely get caught. Is there a balance in the strategy?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, there is, but the balancing factor is if we get the very stupid ones early we can concentrate on the not so stupid more effectively.

Q18 Mr Clappison: Can I come on to the question of gun crime which you mentioned in passing, Home Secretary, because whilst there are statistical arguments over which forms of statistics should be used in other areas, I think there is a stark statistic that gun crime, however you chose to measure it, has gone up very considerably and, by most measures of it, has more or less doubled in the last five years. You mentioned homicides, murders, involving guns; you said that it was going down. In the last year of which there were figures there were 81 homicides, whereas five years previously there were 49. The point which I am making to you, Home secretary, you might disagree but I am reading from the notes on violent offences, that gun crime today is at a much higher level than it certainly was five years ago and, I venture to say, much more than we are used to in this country, something which is alien to our experience; and whilst it is right to say that gun crime is a very small proportion of crime, it has increased very substantially in the last five years. Will you make it your aspiration not just to level off that increase but to seek to bring it down to the sort of levels which we were used to?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, we have made it absolutely clear that this has to be given priority, not simply because of the tragedy of being a victim but because of the fear and insecurity that it creates. It is true that the use of guns in terms of the carrying and threatening of guns has gone up: 77% of those recorded incidents involving guns involved no injury; 23% involved injury of a variety of natures; a 15% drop in the more serious, but a very substantial use of replica weapons, which accounts for a very large percentage, in fact 35%, of the uplift in the use of guns. So we have to concentrate on those areas and we have to make sure that there is effective work within communities, which is why operation Trident in London has been so successful, because it has engaged the communities which were most likely to be victims and most likely to host the perpetrators. We are concentrating on four major areas now: Greater London, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Nottingham. Nottingham, not because their figures are anywhere near Greater Manchester or West Midland ‑ in fact they are about a quarter ‑ but because of the particular immediate proliferation of the use of guns in that area often associated with drugs.

Q19 Mr Taylor: Home Secretary, could I ask you about what measures the Government may be taking to promote public confidence in the new community and custodial sentences? Have you got a strategy for making sure the public are aware? In short, do you have a media strategy to go with your thoughts about this?

Mr Blunkett: We jointly agreed with the Lord Chief Justice and with the Lord Chancellor and Constitutional Affairs Secretary that we would work with magistrates and district judges and the new local Community Justice Boards to ensure that, firstly, there is a proper explanation of what is taking place, including information to victims, and, of course, the Domestic Violence (Crime and Victims) Bill includes measures currently in the House of Lords at the moment and will be returning to us shortly to actually ensure that this happens with victims; secondly, to make sure that there is clarity about the kind of sentences that are given for a particular type of crime, because very often the doubt that is thrown on the system is because of inconsistencies in sentencing and the way that people are dealt with; and, thirdly, where people breach community orders, including anti‑social behaviour orders, that magistrates and district judges deal with them decisively so that the message is clear.

Q20 Mr Taylor: I wonder, Home Secretary, if I could develop this rather home‑spun question, if I may. As a Member of Parliament for a suburban constituency in the Midlands, if I was challenged by my constituents, how would I be able to point out in my community examples of community sentences working effectively? What would be the visible sign of community sentences working well?

Mr Blunkett: It would be a discernable drop in lower level anti‑social behaviour, it would be a drop in non‑violent crime, because obviously violent crime should lead to a custodial sentence; it would be in the future the security of knowing that the community centres would be linked not simply with a particular period of the day or week when activity has to be undertaken, but, through electronic tracking, that people are confined to a particular area at a particular time of the day and that they can be tracked if they move outside that zone.

Q21 Mr Taylor: I follow what you say, Home Secretary, about electronic tracking, and that is helpful to the person who is doing the monitoring, no doubt. Do you think, Home Secretary, that there ought to be a visible awareness to the general public that this person is doing community service? I am not suggesting that they should have marks on their foreheads or anything like that, though my generation may have lived through a bit of that. Should they be identifiable to the public, the people who are doing community service?

Mr Blunkett: I think the activity should be. I think we do not make half as much as we might as to the clean‑up, the restorative work, the improvements to the community being undertaken, both in terms of community sentences and those who are on supervised activity on probation, and we should do so. We have all got examples around the room, I imagine, of going to, say, luncheon clubs for elderly people. I remember going last Christmas and the people who were serving, who were washing up, who were looking after the elderly people, were themselves on community sentences; and I thought it was a very substantial exercise, not just in demonstrating that they could learn to do good, but actually rebuilding confidence amongst older people that these people are redeemable: because obviously everyone who is not going to stay in prison for the rest of their lives has to be redeemable, otherwise we have an impossible situation of the revolving door in terms of crime.

Q22 Mr Taylor: Thank you, Home Secretary. Can I turn the questions towards NOMS, which I believe to be the acronym for National Offender Management Service. Has a detailed business case for the NOMS operation been drawn up yet, and, if so, when can we expect publication?

Mr Blunkett: Yes. We undertook consultation, as you will be aware from the nature of your question, and we also, at that point, agreed that we would commit ourselves to developing new forums. There is one that starts at the end of next week with staff themselves. The business case in relation to rationalisation of headquarter services we have referred to at the beginning of this session in terms of the reductions we can make in overhead costs, the rationale in terms of the delivery of more effective services, is, of course, the joining up of those who are in and coming out of prison with activity when they leave the prison service. I almost think it speaks for itself. I know there has been controversy about setting up the Offender Management Service, but it has generally been internally in terms of people's insecurity and worry about the nature of their employment and the direction. I think most people I have spoken to are wholly in favour of a holistic service joining those two things up, and, of course, it is accompanied by a very substantial increase in spending on correctional services, over 8% next year and a very substantial expansion including the contribution of another Ł100 million extra towards the 3,700 extra prison places and the 1,800 probation staffing places that will be put in place over the next 18 months.

Q23 Mr Taylor: Home Secretary, you may be aware of the contradiction that this Committee has encountered between the evidence given to us last July by Mr Martin Narey who said that all was very well indeed with the introduction of NOMS, whereas a Home Office paper leaked in the press last week, I believe, in a newspaper called the Guardian, which I do not read myself, suggested that there was a high level of risk associated with the project. They cannot both be right, Home Secretary. What would you say to that?

Mr Blunkett: I always believe everything I read in the Guardian, so I am immediately going to turn to the permanent secretary to refute it.

Mr Gieve: Actually there is not a contradiction here. I think what was in the Guardian was an extract of the risk register for the project, and on a risk register you set out your major risks and how you are going to handle them, and if I did not have a risk register which said there were some significant risks which we were focusing on, then I would be worried about the management of the programme.

Q24 Chairman: Do you remain, Home Secretary, as confident today as Mr Narey was in July that NOMS will be delivered to time and be able to deliver the aims that you set out for it?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, I do.

Q25 Mr Taylor: Home Secretary, are you comfortable with the current plans for funding of the Probation Service and, in particular, are the resources there to sustain these new community sentences and make sure they are implemented effectively?

Mr Blunkett: Yes. There are two elements to this: firstly, in sheer numbers and sheer bodies to be able to do the job. By 2007, on the new revised spending profile, we will have had a 50% increase in staffing in probation since it was established as a national probation service three years ago, three and a half years ago, so the bodies will be there.
What we do with them is the second and most important element. Paul Goggins the corrections minister, and myself are in discussions with the senior staff, including Christine Knott, in regard to making sure that we are using everyone effectively, using technology effectively, focusing on what requires to be done and connecting the service with the key focus in the community. I think that is a real challenge and I think that it may well be the insecurity that comes with any change and the challenge of doing things in new ways that have probably led to the general concern that has undoubtedly existed in probation staff.

Q26 Mr Taylor: Finally, Home Secretary, from me, will it be an indication that NOMS is working well if re-offending is reduced, and have you got a target for the relationship between those two?

Mr Blunkett: The first answer is, yes, there is absolutely no point to having the service if its objective is not to avoid re-offending, to provide rehabilitation, to ensure that education and training and employment opportunities are dramatically changed and the health and the self‑esteem of the clients. This is particularly true on the latter point in relation to women prisoners, who in very, very large numbers are either abused or self‑abused before they come into the criminal justice system. On the second, we have immediate targets in relation to the 5% target that has been established in terms of re-offending and very much bigger targets in terms of the prolific offender programme to which I referred earlier.

Q27 Mr Singh: Home Secretary, do you think fines are an effective form of sentencing and are you encouraging the sentencers to make more use of them?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, we do, and the dramatic changes that have been brought about by the actions of my colleagues in the Constitutional Affairs Department have dramatically changed the collection rate, which is an absolutely vital part of making a fine a reality in terms of a punishment. A punishment that is not followed through and a punishment that has no consequences is not a punishment. So we can do a great deal more, not least in terms of reversing what has been a trend over recent years of a fall‑off in the use of fines which, I suspect, accompanied a lack of confidence in fines by magistrates who felt that the fine system was not actually achieving the goal. The figures are quite startling. I think there has been a drop of something like 60,000 a year drop in the usage of fines, and, therefore, the usage of other punishments which are by their very nature more expensive. So if we can have an effect on crime by using both fixed penalty notices and fines effectively, then we should do so.

Q28 Mr Singh: Is any information yet available about the conditional caution pilots now used to divert people from prosecution?

Mr Blunkett: We are about to expand these and we will be publishing the evidence in relation to the pilots, because the use of conditional cautions can dramatically change what officers are able to do, as with fixed penalty notices, without having to take people down to the station and, therefore, go through the whole process from arrest to charge; and if we can use that, for instance, linked to interim anti‑social behaviour orders, we could exclude people from town and city centres quickly and effectively whilst the normal course of action literally takes its course.

Q29 Mr Singh: Do you have any plans to increase the use of satellite tracking or other means of surveillance in terms of community disposals?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, I announced the programmes for the three areas concerned on 2nd September. I am very keen indeed, given the immediate trials are successful, to expand this, because I can see for the future that this will not only bring a much more effective form of community sentence but will allow magistrates and district judges and the public to be willing to expand community sentencing, not just because people will know where an individual is and can take action if they are out of the zone they should be in or have entered a zone that they are excluded from, but because by taking these actions you can determine whether someone should be in a particular place at a particular time, like excluded from leaving their home except for a couple of hours during the day when they are allowed to shop or when they are attached to a training programme. We believe from the very early two months that this has been in being that it is working extremely effectively. As you know, we are experimenting both with real‑time and off‑line tracking where one is retrospective and you can track where people have been and the other is real‑time in terms of being able to see where they are using the dual tag and the mobile phone link to them.

Q30 Mr Singh: Home Secretary, we have had an expansion in CCTV, an expansion in speeding cameras and all these surveillance techniques. How do you respond to those who say you are creating a big brother society?

Mr Blunkett: Already with the use of CCTV itself we have been able to link this to video identification. It took a little time to get forces to link up to this, but I think virtually all the police forces in the country are linked. I think 98% of parades are now video ID parades linked to what you can obtain from CCTV. You can get a guilty plea at a very early stage. I still think we can do more on this, but you can get a guilty plea in a way that would not have been possible in the past simply by showing the misfit and their lawyer that you have actually got a usable image of them, and that can be used in the ID parade very quickly and effectively at a time when people have fresh in their minds, rather than weeks later, what has occurred. It is why, Chairman, if I might say so, we are expanding the pilots that we have had on automatic number plate recognition, because in the experiments alone we got 13,000 hits in terms of being able to get the criminals to justice. That is something like a nine‑fold increase on that particular nature of crime without the AMPR and a four‑fold increase on the kind of activity from what could be expected from a constable going about his or her normal duty. Therefore we are going to expand it by putting Ł15 million of extra capital into providing for 23 forces the facility to do this, to be able to develop with the Association of Chief Police Officers a database so that this can be linked across the country so that there can be real‑time evidence. We are putting in place the necessary training, and we believe that this will result in a very substantial reduction both in crime, because people will know about it, and a substantial improvement in the number of people brought justice. So it is going to be a very, very wise use of investment all round.

Q31 Mr Singh: Home Secretary, what steps are you taking to increase the rehabilitation of prisoners and, in particular, why does the Home Office not adopt the same targets and treatment times for ex‑offenders leaving prison as for people entering prison and why have the conclusions of the prison industry's review apparently been ignored in the Government's re-offending action plan?

Mr Blunkett: I am unfamiliar with your final point. I am very happy, Chairman, to write, but I am extremely familiar with the dramatic increase in the treatment programme now linked to the Department of Health, because we have the agreement now, of course, with the Department of Health taking over health treatment, including drugs within the prison service, the dramatic expansion that is taking place in drug treatment and the link to the expansion with a 50% increase in drug treatment within the community. The whole point of the Offender Management Service is to link what has taken place within the Prison Service to continuing that treatment and rehabilitation when prisoners leave the service. There is a 55% increase planned in the rehabilitation element, which has to follow through the treatment element, and, of course, you will be familiar with it ‑ it was not part of your question, but let me say the arrest referral, the new expansion of the restriction‑‑

Q32 Chairman: I am really sorry, Home Secretary, we are going to need you keep you fairly tightly to the questions.

Mr Blunkett: I bow to your understandable wisdom on this.

Q33 Janet Anderson: Home Secretary, if I could ask you a brief supplementary while are talking about fines and fixed penalty notices. I was very pleased when the Government introduced a ban on the use of handheld mobiles while driving a motor vehicle; it was, in fact, the subject of a private members bill of mine some time go. Are you happy with the level of enforcement of that ban: because I do think most of us see every day that this is widely flouted?

Mr Blunkett: The police service did warn that it would take time to bring in and that they would use warnings rather than prosecution in the early stages, so there will not be from those early months a clear, definable and discernible difference. If there was not to be a discernible difference in the months ahead, I, for one, would be extremely concerned, because, of course, because it is visible, it should be trackable, and AMPR should actually help them once they have the number plate of the car to track the individual who is breaking the law. So we ought to see from the new programme a substantial hit. But the real point of doing it, and I congratulate you on your own efforts in bringing this to the fore, is to get people to change their behaviour, just as the behaviour in terms of the misuse of fireworks and the particular type of the fireworks used has been already affected, in my view, by the combination of the firework regulations and the use of dispersal and anti‑social behaviour orders.

Q34 Mr Prosser: Home Secretary, is there to be a formal decision to extend qualified majority voting and core decisions on asylum, immigration and visa matters and will the House have an opportunity to discuss these questions?

Mr Blunkett: It was agreed in 1997 that, as a consequence of the Amsterdam Treaty, there would be a change in qualified majority voting related to the expansion of the European Union to 25 rather than 15 and that that would be undertaken in areas where the veto of one state interfered with the joint action necessary to protect other states. That is clearly the case with nationality and asylum, because of border controls and the necessary action to be taken in both protecting those land sea borders and in terms of action within the European Union and the fact that countries like our own are, as a result, the victim of failure elsewhere: because, as I was pointing out in the House the other day, we are at the end of the line in terms of ‑ I said "the end of the line" - it was pointed out that people in Ireland felt that they were at the end of the line, but in terms of massive immigration it was undoubtedly the case that we are. The result of that was that we secured a continuation of the ability to choose, to pick and choose, which of those particular measures we chose to opt into and, therefore, which we opted to stay out of. We were in a position to do that, we are prepared to do it where it is in our interests, but in most cases it is in our interests to get agreement across Europe for others to do the job that would otherwise put us at risk; and I am very proud of that, and the agreement that was reached last Monday and Tuesday, which will be ratified at the European Council this Friday, actually continues to build in that safeguard along with substantial changes in the wording of other aspects of directives which we were able to participate in rather than simply be outside but are able to determine whether we opt into if in the finality we do not like them.

Q35 Mr Prosser: How useful is the opt‑in option given that once we have opted in we cannot opt out and we do not have any influence then over decisions that eventually will be taken by qualified majority voting?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, this is true, and it is exactly the same as a situation of unanimity. With unanimity you often have to, by its very nature, make difficult choices as to whether, where there is a minor disagreement, you chose to veto, and therefore block, or whether you capitulate and go along with something that is less than satisfactory. That has been the case in the years, the 30 years that we have been Members of the European Union. Once you have opted in, then of course you are subject to having to agree with everyone else that you will renegotiate, as we do. We have, for instance, on asylum Dublin 1, which was actually not implemented between 1991 and 1997 and, when it was, turned out to be pretty feeble; so we then moved to Dublin 2, on which everyone pinned their great hopes. It is slightly better, but it is actually, our action in terms of moving border controls to France and now to Belgium and the rigorous action we have taken in terms of in‑country claims and where we have dealt the draw‑down on benefit and other actions that has made the difference.

Q36 Mr Prosser: I want to ask some questions about this Committee's report on asylum applications. You might recall that we criticised the quality of an issue of the decision taking and we recommended that the system should be front‑loaded and extra resources should be put in at an early stage to achieve sound decisions which were sustainable, etc. Can you tell us what extra resources you have put in, what improvements have been made and what are the plans for the future?

Mr Browne: Our principal objective in this regard is shared by the Committee, and that is to drive up the quality of the initial decisions. Part of the essence of the quality of decisions in this area, of course, is to make those decisions within an appropriate time‑scale; and we have consistently been meeting quite demanding targets in relation to new asylum applications. In fact targets have been exceeded consistently over the last year, or thereabouts, in this regard and we are regularly making 80% of the decisions within two months of applications, which compares favourably with the total history of this country's ability to be able to make decisions in this area under any government in the past. That of itself, of course, does not improve the quality of the decision‑making, and we have been concentrating resources on training our case‑workers who make the initial decisions. For example, over the summer all of the case‑workers were trained on human rights issues, and over the autumn all of the case‑workers will be trained on the most important issue, in my view, in any event, in relation to these decisions, which is how you make decisions about credibility, which are some of the most demanding areas in terms of decision‑making in these sorts of cases. Over and above that, we have built into our structure. We already had, I think, when the Committee reported, involvement with Treasury solicitors who were sampling cases and looking at the decision processes. I think at that time there were sampling 25 and they are now up to sampling 50 a month; and we have recently with UNHCR started a programme on which they are sampling also 50 decisions a month feeding back to case-work managers and to individual case-workers and will in due course be reporting to us in relation to the quality of those decisions. So we decide in current figures about 82% of applications within two months. 85% of decisions sampled at random are found to be fully effective or better, and presently 81% of asylum decisions assessed by external assessors were found to be fully effective or better. There is a continuing concern in relation to our ability to be able to sustain some of those decisions, particularly in relation to certain nationalities at appeal, and we are in the process at the moment of following cohorts of decisions through the whole process to see what we can learn from why there are variable rates of appeal and variable rates of success on appeal in later stages of the process. So that is a significant amount of progress that has been made, and we are grateful to the Committee for the recommendations in this regard, which we have taken very seriously.

Q37 Mr Prosser: The Committee also recommended that when asylum seekers came to receive the decision on their appeals they should attend in person, so that if the appeal is negative they could be, if necessary, detained on the spot and avoid all the difficulties of apprehension and arrest, etcetera. I think the response from the Government was that in certain circumstances that would happen. Can you tell us what circumstances would be appropriate and why does that not become a general rule, attending in person?

Mr Browne: It is our ambition to do that for as many asylum applicants as possible. It requires us to take advantage, I think, in terms of the processing, of the significant reduction in numbers that there has been since the peak, in October 2002, was it? There has been a reduction of about 70%. We have, of course, the significantly trained resource now and we have, as you know, a dispersed post support system which has an infrastructure and a management structure and a contact management system in relation to asylum applicants, and we have an improved, a very much improved, contact management system of reporting for asylum applicants. We are about to begin the induction process, based in Manchester, which we have been building. With the Bristol decision, we may hopefully shortly, depending on what view those who took that appeal take about a further appeal, be able to move towards construction of an accommodation centre. All of those factors, the reduced numbers, the capacity that we have built, our experience of driving down the numbers, the importance which we also recognise of contact management of asylum seekers and indeed the provision in the last Act which allows us in certain circumstances as an alternative to detention to electronically tag certain asylum applicants, not to mention the increased capacity in terms of detention which will allow us to make further use of the Harmondsworth fast track type process for increased numbers of people, will allow us to do just what the Committee recommended for a significant number of asylum applicants. It means changes in the way in which we use our processing at the moment. My belief is that we can reduce the time that individual cases take to be processed. The foreshortened appeal process, with the single appeal process, which will come in in April will also allow us to do that. The more we can concentrate the decision making process and use the existing resources that we have developed and the infrastructure that we have developed to keep in contact, the more likely we are to be able to invite people in at the end of the process to give them their eventual decision. It seems to me that the structure of dealing with asylum applicants also allows us to address some of the other issues which are barriers to removal at the end of the day, such as redocumentation and identifying people properly so that we can communicate with their governments.

Q38 Chairman: You said you would like as many as possible to attend personally to receive those. Could you give us an estimate of what proportion of failed asylum seekers would get their decision in person in, say, a year's time or two years' time?

Mr Browne: I am not, with respect, genuinely in a position to do that at the moment. I know that would be a helpful indication and I will endeavour to give that information to the Committee as soon as I am able. I am sharing with the Committee a realisation that we have the opportunity, we believe, to be able to move in a way which would be consistent with the Committee's view of the way in which we should move in terms of processing asylum applicants, a recognition that contact management with asylum applicants is crucially important to our ability to be able to remove them. That is one of the lessons of the Harmondsworth fast track process. There are a number of other lessons. We cannot obviously detain all asylum applicants through the process and would not wish to do so.

Q39 Mr Prosser: On the question of embarkation controls, the government committed itself to keeping embarkation controls under review so that we could count people and count people out. Is that still an option and how much progress has been made to achieve that?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, it is. We believe it can be undertaken when we have a combination of the electronic border surveillance, e-borders for short, the first step of which will be part of the investment over the next few months which will give us the beginnings of the real capacity to be able to use, through electronic means, the tracking of people coming in and out of the country. The second is, in terms of long term as opposed to short term visitors, identity cards. The two together will give us some opportunity to be able to do what is not physically possible any more in terms of a paper based system of embarkation. Where countries pretend that they do it, they are now being honest enough to say that it is merely, literally, a paper exercise that has no value whatsoever.

Mr Browne: There are two other projects which are relevant to this. One is Operation Iris which will offer regular travellers the opportunity to be able to check in and out of the United Kingdom by reference to their iris scanning. The other is Project Semaphore which will be up and running by the end of the year and which was announced on 22 September. It is a building block towards e-borders. We are already in the process of structuring that.

Chairman: It would be very helpful if, Home Secretary, you or the Minister could write to us setting out the milestones you have begun to indicate and how we get from here to embarkation controls.

Q40 Mr Clappison: Can I ask how you assess the current threat to the United Kingdom and if you are prepared to venture any views on Iraq, as to whether or not our continuing involvement in Iraq increases the threat to the public here?

Mr Blunkett: On the first, the level of threat has remained for some time. We gave a specific promise that were that to change we would ensure that people were aware and that, where there was a very specific threat, we would tell people what that specific, identifiable threat was, as we did when we had the threatened attack on Heathrow. On the issue of the threat from Iraq, we believe - and we have seen this with the kidnaps in Afghanistan, as we have with Iraq itself -- that those who are causing the greatest havoc in disrupting the efforts at security and stability in Iraq are very substantially not Iraqis but people from outside the country.

The Committee suspended from 3.52pm to 4.04pm for a division in the House

Q41 Mr Clappison: You were saying - I think you would have widespread support in this - that problems in Iraq were being caused by people coming in from outside and trying to disrupt the rebuilding of the country. Can I draw you into another aspect of this and see what comment you would like to make? There may be a linkage between what is taking place in Iraq and an increased risk of terrorism in this country. That is a concern which you will bear in mind, is it?

Mr Blunkett: If the situation in Iraq was to deteriorate and troops were to be pulled out by partner countries and therefore Iraq, as with the Taliban in Afghanistan, became a host country for training and giving succour to those terrorists, Iraq would become the foundation and the base for greater risk. What puts us at risk at the moment is precisely those people who are not located and fixed in a functioning country but often on the fringes of areas, as with the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where it is very difficult to get to them. It is that loose, franchise network that constitutes al Qaeda that we are taking on worldwide.

Q42 Mr Clappison: Turning to a departmental question on this, spending on counter-terrorism is due to rise by 40 % between 2004 and 2007 but, for very understandable reasons, it is not subject to the same detailed, public scrutiny as other areas of expenditure are. Is there anything you can say about guaranteeing that the taxpayer is getting value for money on that?

Mr Blunkett: Wherever we can, we do demonstrate where the money has been spent. For instance, the 84 million addition this year that we put into policing we identified 50 million of going into Special Branch activity. Where we have increased the budget of the security service - and we will have increased their capacity by next year by 50 % - the ISC, the Intelligence and Security Committee, have oversight of what has happened there. They scrutinise and then produce their report. I think it would be fair to say both transparently, where that is possible, and behind the scene where that is not there is proper scrutiny.

Q43 Mr Clappison: You adverted a few moments ago to some of the things which have happened in other countries. Can I ask you about EU cooperation against terrorism and what in your view are the most significant aspects of EU cooperation?

Mr Blunkett: There was the declaration this last March on combating terrorism. We have been discussing as part of the five year work programme for the Justice and Home Affairs Council making this real in terms of the coordinator doing the job of coordination, rather than going off on an independent tack, of ensuring that Europol strengthens its own activity, that the sharing of information within the bounds of ensuring that our own security and intelligence services are not put at risk is undertaken in a way that is positively helpful in tracking people across Europe and across boundaries and of course the way in which we can learn lessons from what has taken place elsewhere. For instance, being able to follow through rigorously on what was learned by the terrible attack in March in Madrid.

Q44 Mr Clappison: Will you give priority to ensuring that this all translates into practical effect and in particular, on the EU plan of action proposals by the Commission, are you confident they will have practical effects?

Mr Blunkett: If the coordinator does the job well and there is a clear focus on delivery, as with terrorist financing, for instance, we can do the job together. We cannot rely on other countries protecting us but we can collaborate together to make a joint effort, given that we are at risk across the developed world. That is why joint exercises are so important and we have been working very closely with the French. Next spring we will be working very closely with the United States.

Q45 Mr Clappison: How confident are you that there are adequate controls on use by US authorities of details of airline passengers passed on to them under the EU/US agreement? It is quite understandable that the United States would want that agreement but how confident are you on the controls?

Mr Blunkett: I am now. My Christmas and New Year, as for the Transport Secretary, were made a misery by the difficulties that we had in the early stages. I can say these things now because I am not interfering with an election which is currently taking place elsewhere. The truth is that in understandably introducing that, where there were warnings, we had to sort out with the American authorities that the information was requested at an appropriate moment, that when it was requested it could be received in a suitable format, that it was going to be collated and used effectively. We now have that. I have been very grateful to Tom Ridge, as homeland security secretary, who worked very closely with myself and with the Transport Secretary in the United States, with Alistair Darling, to achieve that.

Q46 Chairman: The European Parliament is still opposed to that treaty, is it not, partly because things like credit card details of passengers may be passed to the US authorities and not be subject to the same data protection as we would have in this country? Are you saying that since the European Parliament decided to oppose this agreement in June there has now been a tightening of agreement on these things?

Mr Blunkett: The European Parliament were objecting the individual nation states and ministers are painfully aware of the importance of this. Both the G8 and the presidency next year will want to make sure that we have common standards and that is why the issue of the proper use of biometrics will be very important.

Q47 Mr Singh: In 2002/3 less than 1% of those stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act were arrested and the vast majority were charged with crimes unrelated to terrorism. Are you confident that the police are not using their powers under the Terrorism Act to go on fishing expeditions?

Mr Blunkett: We set up a working group deliberately -- it has met 15 times since it was established in July - to make sure that we look at the issues around stop and search and the engagement with the community, setting standards and engaging people in believing it is good for them, not some sort of fishing trip or trawl which is just deliberately intended to disrupt the community. Where that engagement with the community has been effective, for instance, in south London, it has also engaged the cooperation of the community itself. It is fair to say that the statistics that come out need to be measured by the number of charges of activity under other Acts, not just the Terrorism Act. Therefore, half the arrests have led to charges under other measures.

Q48 Mr Singh: The number of Asians stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act last year as against the year before is three times the increase in the number of whites stopped and searched. Given the low number of arrests for terrorism related offences, what have you done to ensure that the police are not antagonising the Asian community, whose help they probably will need to track down terrorists?

Mr Blunkett: Firstly, to ensure that they are engaged in that review that I have described. Whatever people feel about the issue of providing a note on stop as well as search, it is an absolutely key tool for reassurance within the community but also to provide intelligence based activity on precisely what the stop as well as the search are being used for and what can be learned from it. Secondly, we have issued new guidance on the section 44 powers which became particularly controversial, to ensure that the police are using these in appropriate circumstances. I am prepared to take any other sensible action that does not disrupt the police doing their job but reassures the community that this is about focused and targeted activity. It is inevitable, as it was in north London and in parts of Birmingham, that if you are engaged in following through with those who are using host communities as covered, you will be engaged in counter terrorism stops and searches in stopping more of those people who are from that host community with a particular religious as well as national background. We had that in terms of the Irish community in the 1980s and we have to try to get over that now in terms of the Islamic community in Britain.

Q49 Mr Singh: We are doing an inquiry next week into the impact of the threat of terrorism on community relations and social cohesion. What is your assessment of that impact?

Mr Blunkett: I think it is varied enormously across the country. There has been a degree of fear that has been raised inevitably for the reasons you have enunciated which we need to overcome by engaging the communities affected in the solution. We as a government are engaged at the moment across government in looking at how we can improve what we do, both in terms of public services but also liaison in what might be called civil society to get to the roots of this. I have not come across anyone who has a very clever answer. We all have a perspective on the problem. I want to put on record the commendation of the British Council of Moslems, the way in which they have been working themselves and with us in terms of providing that reassurance, the household bulletin that they put out, the work they did in terms of the tragic capture of Ken Bigley and the way in which they worked with us in looking at ways of overcoming some of the problems you have identified.

Q50 Mr Singh: Finally, you will do everything in your power to ensure that the Moslem community as a whole is not scapegoated because of terrorist threats, however few?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, we are absolutely clear about that and have been from the beginning which is why I am coming back to the issue I raised three years ago which was one of protecting people from incitement to religious hatred and to ensure that we provide the protection that we would all expect for ourselves.

The Committee suspended from 4.15pm to 4.25pm for a division in the House

I did intend to say we have now a community safety forum set by the Association of Chief Police Officers, working with the Moslem community and we are also working alongside culture, media and sport with the Society of Editors on avoiding misleading betrayal or a misuse of words which adds to the problem.

Q51 David Winnick: Home Secretary, you have dropped the idea, have you not, of issuing a combined passport and ID card? You have made that clear. It was not such a good idea?

Mr Blunkett: We have accepted the recommendation of the Committee. We are a listening government. We respond to those who have sensible things to say and the draft Bill was precisely to get people engaged with the practical issues. I am very pleased about that. It obviously has meant that we have had to reconfigure the presentation of those elements which require publication of a separate card. It might be helpful if I say a word about that. We will be publishing a regulatory impact statement alongside the publication of the Bill following the Queen's Speech. At that time, we will be able to tell the House more about the actual detail of funding. I thought it would be helpful, given misleading statements that were made last week, to indicate the configuration. The biometrics will be part of the development of the passport system over the next three years. That development of secure passports which is essential now for travel, not least to the United States where otherwise it will cost an individual $100 a time to obtain a visa and six weeks of considerable wait to do so, will enable us to be able to demonstrate the taking and the use of the biometric and the cost of the passport and then the cost of the ID card which will go alongside it. The cost of the ID card element will be the database and the ability, as again recommended by the Committee, of people to be able to monitor the access to that database and to check their own details and question with the Commission - that we have also agreed to expand as recommended by you - to be able to determine what is being accessed on that database and by whom. The cost of that therefore will run something like this: 415 million, we estimate, by 2008/9 for the development and delivery of the whole of the cost of the biometric passport and 85 million for the annual cost of running the card system alongside it. That will mean a charge roughly - we will confirm this with the RIA, the impact assessment - around Ł70 for the biometric passport and Ł15 for the card combined together. However, we have yet to determine what the cost should be of a separate card where people do not require a passport and whether we should put the two together so that if you had a passport you would get a card automatically, but do you automatically get a passport if you get a card? I want to come back to that when we publish the Bill.

Q52 David Winnick: Those broadly will be the figures, not finalised but pretty near what you believe you will be able to tell the House later.

Mr Blunkett: A lot of work has gone into that with our consultancy working alongside us in both reconfiguring the presentation to take account of the separate issue of the card and to take account in the future of concessions. Again, we will obviously have to deal with concessions when we publish the Bill.

Q53 David Winnick: Presumably, if this idea goes through, if Parliament so approves, pensioners, for instance, will get them free?

Mr Blunkett: We are committed to reflecting low income and, as you know, we have provided free passports for those born before 2 September 1929 so at the moment the over 75s have a free passport. Other people, including those on low income, do not get a concession at the moment for a passport so any concession we make in relation to the combined scheme will be a bonus for them.

Q54 David Winnick: Which will add to the overall cost to the Treasury.

Mr Blunkett: I have included an estimate for concessions in the figures I have just given you.

Q55 David Winnick: As regards going from the voluntary to the compulsory stage, the Committee as you know said that instead of what you describe as the super affirmative procedure, if there is to be the transition from voluntary to compulsory, primary legislation should be used. What objections would you have to that?

Mr Blunkett: Simply because we are making a principal decision -- and I will not wish to mislead the House when we present the Second Reading - that we believe a mandatory car is necessary and will be the way to be effective. We agree with the Committee on that. The difference between us is whether, having made that principal decision, an affirmative order before the two Houses of Parliament, a debate on that order - I am very happy for us to build in a commitment to an extended debate compared with the usual affirmative order timing - would be the sensible way of determining whether Parliament felt at that moment it was appropriate to move to the mandatory system.

Q56 David Winnick: There is so much involved in the principle between a voluntary and a compulsory identity card that, for the latter, the compulsory one, it should be necessary to have primary legislation. Have you totally closed your mind to that?

Mr Blunkett: I do not want to mislead anybody. Yes, I have, on the grounds that the purpose of developing the scheme on a voluntary basis to begin with - i.e., at the time when people renew their passport -is to build up a critical core. We reach a point where Parliament can make a judgment as to whether the tests have been met, the ones we set out when we published the draft Bill in terms of the technology, the financing, the acceptability and the likely effectiveness. At that point, Parliament will be able to say yes or no and they will only be saying yes or no to that question: have we reached the threshold and have we passed the test?

Q57 David Winnick: I suspect there will be quite a lot of controversy over whether or not primary legislation will be used or should be used. Time will tell. The Committee recommended that the national identity scheme commissioner should have oversight of the entire scheme. Can you confirm that the commissioner will have access by law to the security and intelligence services relating to the matter we are discussing?

Mr Blunkett: We have agreed that the commissioner will have overall oversight. We have accepted that recommendation. The issue of the commissioner's oversight as opposed to the intercept and surveillance commissioner's oversight is one which we need to resolve. My own immediate instincts are that we need to be able to present the work of the intercept and surveillance commissioners in a way that is understandable to people because they do report publicly. They do check on what the security and intelligence services have been authorised to do in a way that is unique across the world. I am very happy to come back to that when we reach the debating stage.

Q58 David Winnick: Will the commissioner report directly to Parliament?

Mr Blunkett: The commissioner will publish his report and will of course be accountable. I am sure this Committee would wish to be able to engage with he or she.

Q59 Janet Anderson: If we could turn to the reliability of biometrics, the BBC carried a report on 21 October that there was a 10% failure rate for facial recognition in your biometric tests. You did not accept that, even though I understand this figure is in line with a report prepared for the Home Office by the National Physical Laboratory. The UK passport service trial was expected to last six months from its delayed start in April. When do you expect to publish the results to enable an informed public debate to take place?

Mr Blunkett: They were wrong because we are talking about two entirely different things. The survey the BBC referred to was a German survey of the physical technology and its recognition of facial imagery at airports and elsewhere. We have not been testing that in terms of our biometric test. We have had 9,460 people through testing. The challenge is in terms of putting people through those tests, the acceptability of them, the difficulties where there are physical problems for the individual or age or ethnicity problems purely in relation to the iris of the eye. We delayed final publication of the results because they wanted a properly assessable test for disabled people, recruiting 2,000 people with disabilities of different sorts to test that out, not least to refute what has been said in terms of epilepsy and other areas. Why we are doing this is precisely to see what the difficulties and challenges are of adding a third factor in terms of facial recognition, fingerprint and iris recognition in order to provide that security.

Q60 Janet Anderson: How will you ensure that moves within the EU to set common standards for biometrics in passports and other documents do not result in a levelling down to the lowest denominator? Will you give a commitment to report regularly to Parliament on developments on these issues within the EU as we recommended in our report?

Mr Blunkett: Yes, I will give that commitment and, yes, we have worked very hard, the larger countries first coming together under the auspices of what we call the G5 and now with the justice and home affairs work programme to be agreed on Friday. We will have a minimum of two. We want space left for three biometrics but we have at least secured what I believe to be a basic agreement and we should work together on the standards. Going back to your earlier question, the difficulty with the testing that the Germans were doing of the outcome measures of facial recognition was that the technology that was being used was not even to the standard that we believe to be required. We must set out those standards in the course of the legislation so that people are aware that we are using a very high standard and threshold indeed for making sure that the system works.

Q61 Janet Anderson: Thank you. Finally, we welcome your decision to set out the aims of the scheme in the Bill but are you confident that they are not so broad that the Data Protection Act will not operate effectively, particularly since clause one of the draft Bill provides for any of the information on the register to be disclosed to the wide range of persons authorised by the Act?

Mr Blunkett: Yes. We have again been scrutinising what the Committee had to say. We are very keen to distinguish between disclosure on the one hand and verification on the other. I read an article in a Sunday paper - please do not believe that I am blaming the journalists; I am sure they were told to do it - which suggested that people would be able to track people's shopping habits. You can with loyalty cards. You certainly will not be able to with an identity card. Therefore, verification is purely for the purpose of verifying the identity. As I said earlier, people will be able to check what is on and who has checked and they will be able to engage the commissioners who will themselves be sampling the security of the system.

Q62 Chairman: Do you have any regret that licensing and gambling have ceased to be a Home Office responsibility?

Mr Blunkett: There are three genuine answers I can give in relation to Home Office policy and responsibility. One is I was deeply grateful to the Prime Minister for moving hunting with hounds to Defra. I was even more grateful that he moved to the culture, media and sport portfolio the issuing of licences and certainly as of yesterday I was deeply grateful that I did not have to deal with gambling.

Chairman: Thank you very much indeed for your time and thank you for responding positively today and this year to the reports we have produced as a Committee.