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Patrick Mercer: I take that point. I am sure that we will return to discuss the matter at a later stage. The logic still defeats me, but I am sure that the Minister will be able to illuminate me at that later stage. As a result of the discussions about the common travel area and, in particular the interventions by the hon. Members for Vauxhall and for Sheffield, Hallam, I think we have had a taste of what will come up in the future.
Mr. Taylor: I think my hon. Friend was nearly at the end of his remarks, but will he join me in noting that the Minister graciously anticipated a Government amendment on the remaining stages to meet his amendment? I would like it to be on record that it will be a Government amendment. That is crucial because, as we all know, an Opposition amendment could well get stifled by the guillotine that will operate on the remaining stages. Will he reassure himself that the Minister will table a Government amendment to meet his requirement?
Patrick Mercer: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention, which as usual sheds light and clarity on the situation. The remarks that I was about to make were exactly that the Minister has generously and graciously said that he will table a Government amendment to make the clause that much clearer. In the light of that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Chairman: Before I put the question on the clause, I realise that it has been a fairly frustrating debate for some Committee members. However, when we get to clauses 6 and 8 there will be an opportunity to raise their concerns.
Clause 4 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
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Clause 5
Applications relating to entries in Register
Mr. Allan: I beg to move amendment No. 164, in clause 5, page 4, line 35, leave out 'must' and insert
'may, if the applicant so chooses,'.
The Minister was correct to say that the debate on the previous clause was a preface to this debate. In clause 5, we explore the mechanism for how the designated document procedure will work. The amendment seeks to break the link between the designated document and the ID card as a form of compulsion. It says that the only circumstances under which an ID card would be issued, or someone would be entered on the register when applying for the designated document, would be if the applicant chose it. It reverses the presumption, so that the applicant has to request the ID card rather than the Government being able to insist that they take it. I am grateful to the Minister for the clarity of his remarks on the previous clause about compulsion.
It seems to us, however, that the field of play has shifted as we have gone through the ID cards debate, and it has sometimes been difficult to keep up with where we are. My fear is that the legislation still reflects a previous stage of the political debate. The Minister has just accepted that the designated document procedure will now be subject to slightly more robust parliamentary procedure. As originally drafted, it was very weak in terms of scrutiny. All the scrutiny is piled up in clause 6, where we have the super-affirmative, gold-plated procedure. However, we understand from the last debate that the provision in clause 6, which deals with requiring the last 20 per cent. to get ID cards, is not the important one. By the time we get to that debate, we will have discussed compulsion. We are doing compulsion now—on this amendment and these clauses—and we will not be doing compulsion in the sense of clause 6. The decision, in principle, is being taken now.
Mr. Browne: I rise to reinforce the point that I have consistently made in this debate. We should have the debate about compulsion in the context of this legislation. We had it on Second Reading, and that was the appropriate place to have it. We should have it here in Committee when it arises, and not in relation to one clause or another but across the aboard. We should have the debate about compulsion now. People who do not agree with compulsion do not vote for this Bill.
Mr. Allan: I am grateful to the Minister for being so forthright. Because of earlier debates about how the ID card would work, there was a perception that we could introduce a voluntary scheme now. That was the situation that I have been trying to describe. The Government's intention was to introduce a voluntary scheme, and then to have a later decision, perhaps five years down the track or in 2008, when they would come back to the House and have a super-affirmative procedure to decide on compulsion. I suggest that the structure of the Bill still reflects that situation, although the Minister has now made it absolutely clear that the politics is not as such. The impact of
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accepting the Bill is to accept compulsory ID cards today.
I have been trying to describe the situation that I saw in the legislation. Certainly a reason for tabling this amendment is to reverse that position to an earlier stage in the political debate, when the suggestion was of genuine voluntarism. I will set out the reasons why the amendment seeks to do that.
Kate Hoey: I support the hon. Gentleman's amendment, but does he not agree that it would have been much more transparent and honest if the Government had called this Bill the compulsory identity card Bill?
Mr. Allan: The hon. Lady is correct. There is still confusion among the public. The terms of the Bill are such that there is a sense of voluntarism, which is only partial.
There is another debate at the moment, about the digital switch-over of TVs, which will find echoes here. At some point, the analogue TV signal will be switched off, which may be far more resented by people than anything to do with ID cards. That will be a more contentious decision. The Government have set up a genuinely voluntary procedure, in which they are saying, ''Please go out and buy digital TV equipment. At some point we will switch the analogue signal off.'' Some of the features are parallel. The decision is about numbers at any particular stage. How many people have digital TV? How big is the rump that we have to deal with with the big stick? How upset are people going to get when we deal with them? How much will things cost?
In these clauses, we are talking about the principle of compulsion, as set out by the Minister. When we get to clause 6—to the implementation of the regulations required some years hence, in 2008 or whenever—the debate is going to be about cost rather than any issue of principle. Who picks up the tab for the last 20 per cent.? I accept that we are now going to move on. However, the extraordinary thing is that we started out with a super-affirmative procedure for something that is, in a sense, quite trivial—a debate about the costs of dealing with this last 20 per cent.—and a very understated procedure for the big debate, which is the imposition of the ID card on the 80 per cent. It seems back to front to do it in that way.
If we are going to have this compulsory scheme, there are still some important questions about costs. Is there going to be a clear separation of costs in the Passport and Records Agency between those associated with the ID cards and those associated with passport? That is important for scrutiny purposes. The Minister may say that it is value for money to wrap all this up together, but we wish to establish the difference between our proposed scheme in which the ID card is a voluntary bolt-on to the passport, and the Minister's scheme in which everything is wrapped up together.
Unless we break the costs out and see those associated with ID cards, we will not be able to judge the success or failure of the Government's ID card scheme. My fear is that that is precisely the Government's intention—that all should be fudged
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and put together. From a parliamentary point of view, on a debate this contentious, it is important that we are able to see that. I hope the Minister can assure us that the true costs of the two things—passports and ID cards—will be presented separately.
Mr. Taylor: Not very long ago the hon. Gentleman referred to—I use his expression, as it is not one that I would have coined—the ''rump'', the sans culottes, those who have not signed up. Is not part of the difficulty with the rump that we will not know who they are?
Mr. Allan: I think the sans culottes were those at the barricades.
Mr. Taylor: They probably will be.
Mr. Allan: Yes. We will know who those people are, because, as we established in an earlier debate, the Government will have a huge amount of data on them in other databases. Their only defining feature, in my understanding, is that they are people who do not have passports. Again, that is where the cost issues may come into it. It is more likely that elderly people and those on lower incomes will not have passports or will have not applied for them. Therefore, they will be subject to the clause 6 compulsion. I am sure that we will debate that in detail later.
It is important that the separation of costs is clearly set out and that we know whether there is cross-subsidy in the passport system between the passport applications and the ID card system. We may end up with a situation in which those who apply for passports today and over the next few years will subsidise the free or discounted ID cards for those who are brought in under clause 6. That might be a proper policy for the Government to set out, but they need to be explicit. I fear that there is, again, a complete lack of transparency.
It would be helpful to know whether there will be full cost recovery. The Government's regulatory impact assessment says that all the money for setting up the scheme will be recovered from people who are applying. The clause and the Government's procedures clearly define a set of people who will pay for the setting up of the scheme: those who are applying for passports now. We must be clear whether all the costs will be recovered.
I want to advance the case for the amendment both specifically and in terms of saying that there should be a voluntary extension. This debate has given rise to a question: why have the Government not advanced a policy that says that getting the 80 per cent. of people who will have biometric passports on to the system correctly should be the priority? The passport database and those documents that have a defined specific purpose—making it possible for a citizen to travel—would be available to the law enforcement agencies for their purposes under all the normal procedures and with all the normal safeguards. Therefore, why has the focus not been on getting biometric passports sorted out? It should be recognised that that would cover 80 per cent. of the population? Perhaps there could be a voluntary ID
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card scheme for people who do not want to have a passport and who want the convenience of an ID card. However, we should not go to all the hassle, expense and fuss of coming up with this all-encompassing, all-singing, all-dancing scheme.
We should allow the Passport and Records Agency to do its work issuing passports to citizens. We should get that sorted out and deal with the challenges that it will have to face, which are big enough on getting biometric passports right. Should that not be a higher priority? Our amendment would allow it get the passports right while accepting that the only people who would go on to the ID card system are those who choose to do so voluntarily. Going for the solution that the Government have set out is overkill.
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