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Mr. Malins: I am sorry that the Minister is so dismissive about cost. It is all very well to point to the regulatory impact assessment, which we have all read, but, although I take his point about the passports, we also seen contrasting views about the total cost. The Minister owes a duty to the Committee at least to tell us the totals extracted from the regulatory impact assessment because, if nothing else, it would form a record in Hansard that would be useful for parliamentarians and others. Is he not going to give us the figures?
Mr. Browne: Well—
Mr. Malins: No, he is not.
Mr. Browne: The hon. Gentleman was present when the hon. Member for Cotswold did just that. How many times were those figures—[Interruption.] He read them. He did not read those figures from the regulatory impact assessment but from another document. The source of those figures, however, was the regulatory impact assessment. I am never reluctant to accede to the need of the hon. Member for Woking to put information in the public record, but it does not need to be in the public record three or four times within 30 minutes. I am beginning to wonder whether my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West is right about the hon. Gentleman's contributions to our debates if the hon. Gentleman now wants me to read things superfluously into the record.
The amendment, which is designed to remove the ability to charge for any cards, would mean that our proposal to cover the costs from charging would fall. That, in turn, would mean that the only source of funding for the scheme would be general taxation, but it would not make the scheme free in the sense that no one would pay for it. I am sure that Opposition Members would not find that proposition attractive, so I do not expect them to press the amendment.
We believe that ID cards should be compared to passports rather than to those services that are free at the point of use—the very point made by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam. However, if Liberal Democrats take another position, they disagree with the Government. On a regime of full cost recovery, the Bill will allow us to subsidise some groups. Sufficient discretion is allowed in the Bill should the Government of the day decide to waive fees totally for categories of people, including when compulsion is introduced, but that will be a decision for the Government of the day depending on where we are at that time. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his predecessor made it perfectly clear that it was our intention to consider a regime in which not everyone would need to pay the full cost and that some support would be given.
The proposal to charge for ID cards is central to our scheme, and we believe that it is reasonable. The most up-to-date research among the general public shows
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that 68 per cent. of people think that an ID card combined with the passport at the currently projected cost of £85 is a good idea.
Mr. Mole: The hon. Member for Woking spoke earlier of public opinion, based on available knowledge of the scheme's operation. Does the Minister think that the revised figure of 68 per cent. might rise in the knowledge of the likely cost of a biometric visa, which will be required at some stage for entry to the United States? That could be a significant separate sum, which would make having a UK biometric visa at such a cost a more attractive proposition in the first instance.
Mr. Browne: My hon. Friend makes a sensible and important point. I am concerned that I cannot respond other than by making some sort of guess about where public opinion will go. However, I am able to share with the Committee the fact that the last detailed research that I read—I think that it was conducted by MORI; I shall check and, if I have inadvertently given the wrong name, I shall correct myself later—showed that, as the debate has progressed, the public have become more knowledgeable about the scheme. That is appropriate and good. It is exactly as we would want it to be. However, as they were becoming more knowledgeable, the support for ID cards was being sustained at inordinately high levels for any type of public policy. I understand, as the hon. Member for Winchester says, that somebody has to speak up for the 20 per cent. However, somebody has also to speak up for the 80 per cent. If a public policy has the support of 80 per cent., somebody has to speak for them. We need not necessarily adopt the minority position.
Public opinion in support of the scheme is being sustained. People are beginning to understand more clearly what is involved in the scheme, and have a better understanding of compulsion than we give them credit for. As people understand the costings in the context of passports and grasp the reality of the fact that biometrics are becoming a significant part of document security internationally, they realise that they are prepared to meet the costs in order to continue with their own, normal, everyday transactions and international travel.
I am not belittling this—to ask somebody for £85 is to ask somebody for a significant amount of money. To ask somebody for the current cost of a passport could be, depending on their income, to ask them for a significant amount of money. However, the money will be invested for 10 years. We are not going to go back to people every year; it will be for a 10-year passport, associated with a 10-year ID card.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I believe that the Committee might be suspended shortly, so may I ask the Minister very quickly, so that he can give us an answer in the next sitting, about the costs that I read out—£415 million, £85 million and £50 million, a total of £5.5 billion over 10 years? If 55 million British people apply for the ID cards, that is £100, not £85, each. I might be wrong, so I shall be grateful if the Minister can confirm whether I am correct.
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Mr. Browne: With respect, I do not think that one can apply such simple arithmetic to such costings. We must bear in mind that the hon. Gentleman has already asked me for estimates in terms of the number of foreign nationals who would qualify for cards. In any event, 55 million is wrong, because not everybody who lives in the country is over 16. I am sure that he will accept that. This is for a significantly smaller number of people. I realise that the consequence of what I am saying is that the cost per head goes up.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: Exactly; it goes up.
Mr. Browne: I shall endeavour to give the hon. Gentleman information on the calculations later in the debate. He asked for the component elements in an earlier question, and I have undertaken to try to get the answers for him. Let me say before I move on that the research to which I referred was carried out by ICM, not MORI.
The proposal is that the charge for an ID card would be a relatively small uplift to the cost of a passport. That is justified when we consider how secure the process will be. By way of comparison, several EU countries, France and Italy among them, are upgrading their national ID cards to introduce biometrics, as I have told the Committee. For decades, France has issued free cards to its citizens. I understand that the new cards will not be free.
Another effect of the amendment would be to prevent our charging for documents that attract a charge now, if those documents were to be designated as ID cards. It might be an unintended consequence, but it is a consequence. Therefore, we could not charge the full cost for resident permits for nationals of third countries. The consequence of that would be a further loss of income for the Exchequer—or is it Opposition Members' preference for us not to designate this permit and to deprive foreign nationals of the of the security of a card that is functionally equivalent to the one to which British citizens are entitled? I do not believe that it is. We know that foreign nationals who are legitimately here to work or to study sometimes find it difficult to do everyday things, such as open a bank account, without multiple forms of ID. These people bring investment and skills to this country, and we do not want to make life harder for them.
6.30 pm
Before I conclude my remarks on the clause, I shall discuss amendment No. 186, which is on the same theme but which is intended to apply only to those who are subject to compulsory registration. We cannot operate on the assumption that there is a stereotypical group of people who will be subject to compulsory registration, although there is merit in the argument that people from a particular stratum of society will be over-represented. I do not imagine, if I may borrow from an earlier part of the debate, that all of the people who appear before the hon. Member for Woking when he sits as a magistrate and who are not comparatively well off do not have a passport or go abroad on holiday. Indeed, I suspect from the figures that I have
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seen for international travel by UK citizens that a substantial proportion of them do, which is all to the good. Poverty is relative.
My response to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam is that I am not prepared to treat that group of people as an amorphous mass. I shall relate to the Committee a fact that some of my Scottish colleagues will know, which is that the predecessor of my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Glasgow, Anniesland, Donald Dewar, who was a justifiably well respected member of this House for many years, never had a passport until he became the First Minister in Scotland. I do not believe that he had ever travelled abroad. That did not make him any less of a rounded individual. He was, in fact, a very rounded individual with a massive knowledge of several things, but he did not have a passport.
I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making, and I believe that I have responded to it appropriately by saying that there is an intention to keep the discretion and to use it to have reduced charging and, if necessary, free entitlement to cards, but I am not prepared to be forced into a position in which all compulsory cardholders will be granted that.
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