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Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam) (LD): In the spirit of fairness and contextualisation to which the Minister referred, he should have said that I said, ''and, if the Government are arguing that it would not cost three times, it would be helpful to know the incremental cost when it goes from one biometric, to two biometrics and then to three.''
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Mr. Browne: To be fair to the hon. Gentleman, he did say that. I am not in a position at this stage to give him a response. We are carrying out the steps that were suggested by the report that has been prayed in aid by others as an appropriate way in which to proceed.
During the procurement stage of the scheme, we will examine systems and supplier examination to compare the technology available. Perhaps I should now deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Woking about which companies might be carrying out such work. We have yet to enter the procurement phase of the scheme, but the companies mentioned are known as IT integrators, such as Atos and Serco, and those that we would expect to express an interest or to consider whether they should be interested in such matters. I have no way of knowing the source of the quotation that was produced by the hon. Gentleman. I do not know whether it was the result of an after-dinner conversation or a publication. For understandable reasons, I have no direct communication with any of those companies. I reassure members of the Committee that I have gone to great lengths to ensure that I will not have. I have no way of knowing their views and whether they will be interested in such work.
To my knowledge, several IT integrators and smaller companies specialise in biometrics. Some of them are spin-off companies from universities. From my knowledge of the university of Glasgow, I know that at least one company operates in the area. It is a spin-off from research undertaken at the university. I know of that company because I was a student there. I am sure that Committee members who have contact with other universities will know of similar companies throughout the country.
It would not be right at this stage to respond to the question asked by the hon. Gentleman. We have gone to significant lengths to ensure that the whole procurement process and the advice that the Government take is known and understood. The system that we operate will be transparent. As a Government, we have taken advice. We are being advised by PA Consulting, and we have set up a special Government biometrics group chaired by the chief scientific adviser, advised by individual academics and industry experts from the Home Office science and technology reference group and by specialist biometric system consultants. Those involved know full well that the consequence of advising the Government may be that they are disqualified from the procurement process. That has been transparent, and everyone knows that.
I can reassure the Committee that we have taken the best possible advice in this area, in the knowledge that British Governments, and Governments throughout the world, do not have the best track record of delivering IT programmes. We have all learned a lot in the last 10 years or so, and I submit that the Government are getting better at such programmes. There are still some legacy problems from projects and contracts agreed some time ago, but we must admit to the number of significant IT projects and bits of technology that work very effectively every day.
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Every time we make a mobile telephone call, quite sophisticated technology works for us and works very effectively. We should not allow the luddites among us to suggest that technology has not enhanced our lifestyle. We all know full well that technology of all sorts has significantly enhanced our lives and operates effectively in a number of areas. A good example of a large, directly-related IT system that works well is the one that works through the UK Passport Service, efficiently producing millions of documents to a very high standard of security each year. I accept that it had its teething problems at one stage, but it currently works very well. I have ministerial responsibility for it, and if it were not working, hon. Members would be in touch with me on a regular basis. It is working much better than it did.
In response to the question of what trials are anticipated or planned, I can say that much larger trails are required fully to test the performance of biometrics for a population the size of the United Kingdom. They will preferably involve more than 1 million individuals. Large-scale testing is envisaged during the early phase of the implementation of the ID card scheme, and will determine the final design of the scheme—as hon. Members would expect us to proceed. That is substantially why it is an enabling Bill. The legislation before the House will enable the scheme to be introduced, but it would be wrong to commit public money to all the further detailed and very expensive testing without the legislation first being in place. That is why the Government are proceeding on this basis, recognising that it needs to be an incremental process.
We also recognise that using biometrics on such a scale is new, but there are programmes already using the technology successfully. The hon. Member for Woking probably mentioned all of them, but I will try to respond to his question with more information. For example, negative matching to avoid multiple identity enrolments is a common feature of existing biometric systems, including, not surprisingly, the police national automated fingerprint identification service. NAFIS holds more than 5 million sets of prints, and more than 500,000 crime scene maps. The asylum seeker application registration card, ARC, uses fingerprint technology for all asylum seekers coming through the asylum screening units in Croydon. Cards are issued with the holder's fingerprint biometric encoded on a chip in the card. Other examples include the FBI system. That is the largest in the world and contains the fingerprints and criminal history information of more than 47 million subjects. The United Arab Emirates has a database of more than 350,000 iris scans. We are also launching a fast-track immigration clearance system—known, I think, as ''Operation Iris''—using iris recognition technology for foreign nationals who are resident here or are frequent travellers. We are testing that through certain ports of entry.
We have already stated that our best estimates are that the annual cost of issuing biometric passports will be £415 million by 2008. Our best estimate of the additional costs of introducing a biometric ID card
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alongside the passport is £85 million, including the cost of recording, matching and storing three types of biometric information.
I say to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam that that is the best information that I have, and I apologise that it does not answer his desire for better information. I give him an unequivocal undertaking that when we get better information, we will share it. We have no interest in keeping such information to ourselves. If the system is to work, it will need to be introduced incrementally. That incremental process will have consequences, which we will need to share. Principally, the people of the United Kingdom, who will have to pay for this, will have to have faith that the money is being invested appropriately. We will have to come back to Parliament and say, ''Have faith in making the scheme compulsory.'' What would be the purpose of keeping the information secret? There would be none.
It so happens that that is the best information that we have at the moment. There is no other way to dress that up. I would be sorry if Committee members felt that, with that amount of information at this stage, they could not continue in their support. However, I suspect that nobody will withdraw their support because of the presence or otherwise of that information.
As far as further reports on the progress of biometric developments are concerned, we will report back to the Home Affairs Committee, which has been significantly helpful in this process and made a very important contribution during the consultation. We have a duty, beyond that arising from our accountability to Parliament, to keep the Committee informed. It raised some of the better questions about biometrics in the report and it deserves a response. We have a reporting matrix in the Home Office that I check regularly to ensure that we respond as we said we would to all the issues raised by the Committee and that we are still on track to continue to do so. Over and above all that, the identity cards programme is subject to the regular Office of Government Commerce gateway reviews.
I am grateful to the hon. Members for Newark, for Woking and for Sheffield, Hallam for making their points so widely on biometrics. I hope that my response, which was intended to deal with the general points that they made, has been sufficient. I now turn to other points that deserve a response.
Mr. Malins: My mind goes back to my amendment and to the article by Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph about the need for eight fingerprints. I do not know whether the Government are saying, ''Yes, that is right'', or , ''No, that is wrong.''
Mr. Browne: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he should be patient, as amendment No. 152, which he tabled, relates directly to that point. Presumably, that thought engendered that amendment, which I shall respond to specifically. However, I should say that I intend to deal quickly with the amendments because none of the hon. Gentlemen who made contributions
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argued them in any detail. I would be wasting the Committee's time if I argued in detail in response to arguments that were not put forward.
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I have been asked about what happens in other countries, and I shall give the best information that I can. Our European partners are also considering closely the role that biometrics can play in securing identity. I risk encouraging my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) to think that she has at last found the link to creeping integration in Europe that she seeks. Twenty-one of the 25 EU countries have ID cards. That seems to me to provide an unequivocal answer to a question that we may need to address later, which is whether the legislation is compatible with the European convention on human rights. Only the UK, Ireland, Denmark and Latvia do not have identity cards, and we are not alone among them in considering introducing them. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Woking says from a sedentary position that common law countries do not have ID cards. That argument contains a spurious distinction; I do not understand why the people who make it think that it somehow means that identity cards would be unsuitable for this country. We were a common law country during both world wars and we had identity cards then; that did not destroy our common law system. A common law system and identity cards are not incompatible.
That is another of those arguments that people assert and then walk away from, leaving the argument standing as if it were somehow conclusive. They say, ''Common law countries do not have them,'' and they then think, ''I have made my argument, so now I can go.'' I never understand that. To be fair to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam, he at least tried to put some flesh on an argument of this nature about written constitutions yesterday, but he is the first person I have ever known attempt that.
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