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Mr. Gwyn Prosser (Dover) (Lab): I am listening to the hon. Gentleman's arguments with interest. On the use of fingerprints, compulsory biometric identity cards were introduced for asylum seekers in a brief time and were successful. In all the inquiries I have made of immigration officers in Dover—of which we have quite a number—there has not been a single reported incident of forgery or failure.
Mr. Malins: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He and I served together on the Home Affairs Committee, and I am well aware of his interest and expertise in matters of asylum. He is right that the new card for asylum seekers is probably effective, and that is good. However, he will understand my earlier comment about susceptibility to sophisticated attack. If asylum seekers are genuine, they are inevitably
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fleeing persecution and are not necessarily equipped either in their minds or financially to move themselves into the area of serious forgery. That is why I said that it might be a minuscule percentage of those persons within our jurisdiction that are capable of moving into that sphere. Those are the people we should most worry about. They may be the ones we should seek to target if the purpose of the Bill is to counter terrorism and terrorist acts.
Mr. Prosser: The hon. Gentleman uses the phrase ''susceptibility to sophisticated attack''. Those were the words of Professor Anderson to our Select Committee, but he also said that that possible flaw would be apparent only if those tests were done in an unattended manner. If we talk about the sharp end of the argument—the sophisticated attack by would-be international terrorists—those checks would have the best scrutiny. They would be attended, and attendants would be trained to look for those difficulties.
Mr. Malins: The hon. Gentleman might be convinced that biometrics is not a difficult issue. However, he must accept that there is a division of opinion even among the experts. That troubles me, as I am not personally capable of coming down on one or other side of the argument with my own background, which is not in that form of technology.
Mr. Allan: There are a couple of points on the comparison with the asylum seeker system. One is the difference in scale. Interestingly, some problems of false matching increase the bigger the database. There is also the question of motivation. One would have to be pretty weird to want to pass oneself off as an asylum seeker. The motivation to want to crack that system is much less than to crack the national ID card system, where the benefits of gaining a card falsely could be significantly greater.
Mr. Malins: I take the hon. Gentleman's point. I will move away from pure and simple biometrics for a moment—
Mr. Browne: Before the hon. Gentleman moves away from the matter, we could have an endless debate about biometrics, but I do not think that any of us intend to have one. The key answer to most criticism of biometrics is that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dover pointed out, enrolment in the scheme will be supervised. It will not be possible for people to do many of the things that can spoof or beat systems. The putting of the biometrics into the register will be supervised by trained individuals. That is very important.
I do not say that there are no other concerns. However, I do not want to encourage a debate that assumes that the supervision will not take place, that lots of other things could therefore happen, and that we should start to deal with the relevant possibilities and consequences. Having taken advice, we have decided to supervise at a very high level the registration of the biometrics, and that will deal with a whole series of the arguments about spoofing. I shall not go on to the issue of whether people might want asylum registration cards. I have an answer to that, but it is not relevant.
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Mr. Malins: I am grateful to the Minister for his reassurance. Given what I have said about my own technical knowledge, he will readily understand that Committee members have been approached by reliable, respected outside organisations that have some queries. This is not a straightforward issue, about which the Minister can say, ''Don't worry, there are no problems.'' It cannot be as simple as that. Part of the purpose of today's debate is to tease from the Government their solution to some of the problems—all of them, I hope—that have been put to them by experts.
The fundamental first test is that we must be clear about the technology's capabilities. Will it work? The next issue is whether the Government are up to the challenge. We are embarking on the most immense organisational and technical programme. As I shall illustrate in a moment, our track record with some such projects has not been perfect.
Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): Before the hon. Gentleman moves on to the legitimate question of whether any Government are capable of delivering a major information technology project as efficiently and effectively as we would like, may I throw the question back at him? He needs to deal with it. The thrust of his argument on biometrics seemed to be that because the technology might not have advanced to the absolute limit of its capability, the Government should not embrace it. However, there has to come a point in the development of any technology at which the Government say, ''This has a useful application.'' If his party were in government, how much longer would it wait before embracing the advantages of technological change and innovation?
Mr. Malins: That is a more general point, but the hon. Gentleman asks a very fair question. Owing to my lack of technical expertise, I cannot say how much longer that would be.
Mr. Salter: I am a Luddite too.
Mr. Malins: I do not know the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question. If he is asking whether I am saying that, because the technology has not reached perfection, it is not time to grasp the issue and get on with it, he asks a sensible, real question, and I give him the answer that he wants to hear: I could never wait until I was 100 per cent. sure about something before I adopted it. There would have to be a point at which I said, ''Yes, subject to any blips, I accept it.'' However, the hon. Gentleman must also understand that the issue under discussion is linked to a much later debate on cost.
At the same time, a question is perpetually on my mind. If the system cost a certain amount, I would have another balancing exercise to do in my mind: would that money be better spent in another way to achieve the objectives? That debate is for a little later on. However, the hon. Gentleman made a good intervention.
11.15 am
Mr. Salter: The hon. Gentleman is most generous in giving way. Does he not accept that very similar arguments must have been made when the police
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started using fingerprint technology? Although that technology is not perfect, it has undoubtedly resulted in the capture and conviction of many thousands, if not millions, of people throughout the developed world. Therefore, I ask the hon. Gentleman to be very careful about making inflammatory claims on the failure of biometrics because we are all on a learning curve. Does he not agree that the fact that many other sophisticated and developed societies and Governments are embracing biometric technology teaches us, as a matter of common sense, that Britain must embrace it because of its benefits, and also be mindful of the fact that it will continue to develop and improve?
Mr. Malins: If I may say so, that is another very fair intervention by the hon. Gentleman. I am looking forward to hearing about the experiences of other countries that are embracing the technology; there will not be another possibility for us to do so.
The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of fingerprints. In effect, he is asking me whether I think it is likely that before that technology was introduced there was a tremendous argument about whether that would be worth doing, and whether it has in fact been worth doing. I am sure that there were arguments against it at the time, and I know with my other hat on that the fingerprint match is a tremendously helpful asset in criminal cases, so I agree that they work.
I have repeatedly said that I am not an expert in the field of biometrics and I await to be convinced on all matters, but where I probe a little more than gently is in asking what practical effect the biometric scheme as a whole will have on the mischief that we are trying to cure by the Bill. What is that mischief? I do not need to go outside and identify myself very often, and I would say to anybody who wanted to discuss that subject, ''Please don't ask me to be interested in biometrics for the purposes of identifying myself because I don't have a problem with that.'' That is not what the Bill is about. It is principally about giving us the tools to fight a possible terrorist attack. If it is about that, the issue of biometrics must be discussed in the context of how effective it will be specifically in terms of the principal purpose of the whole system, which is to fight terrorist acts. After all, the previous Home Secretary—the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett)—and other Ministers have said that they think that the system will help in countering terrorism, although the extent to which they think it will help varies.
Mr. Salter: Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on the statement he has just made? The motivation for supporting an ID cards Bill cannot be purely to engage in the fight against terrorism. Does he not accept that Committee members have different reasons for supporting or opposing the Bill. The fight against terrorism is important to me, but the ability of any Government to know exactly who is in the country, and issues to do with serious organised crime, money laundering and the smuggling of drugs and people, are all of equal importance. I would like the hon. Gentleman to reflect on the fact that Committee members have been motivated to want to serve on the
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Committee and to make the Bill work by many different issues.
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