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Mr. Gwyn Prosser (Dover) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman is thrashing around looking for some other means to spend money, whether on the police, MI5, MI6 or our border control people. However, is not he aware that all those agencies, and all the people who represented them at the Select Committee, gave robust support for identity cards? Is not that a good way to spend the money?
Patrick Mercer: One wonders whether they were asked about other ways in which the money might be spent. I agree with the hon. Gentleman's point—most agencies have supported the identity card—but were they asked, ''If a certain sum of money is available, what do you want to spend it on? Do you want it spent on identity cards or on an extra 200 operatives working abroad—in Pakistan, for example?'' I do not believe that that question was posed and one wonders what the answer would have been had it been asked.
Mr. Browne: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said that the single most important thing that the Government could do to assist in the prevention of terrorism is to proceed to secure the identity of people who are resident in this country through an identity card scheme?
Patrick Mercer: I am aware that that is precisely what the commissioner said, but I want the Government to justify it and to give us a reasoned argument to suggest why the money should be spent at this stage on cards, rather than on the other needs that we have just discussed.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central) (Lab/Co-op): I wish to help the hon. Gentleman. He does not appear to have understood the point made by the hon. Member for Winchester, which is that the vast majority of the money for the cards will be raised from the people who get the card. Therefore, that money, which has not yet been raised, cannot be transferred to another use, however useful that might be.
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Patrick Mercer: The fact remains that we are still talking about public money. If we are to ask people to pay a sum of money for a card, are we convinced that that is the only means of proceeding? Would we not be better spending the money on other agencies, resources and methods to counter the threat that we have been talking about?
Mr. Malins: On that last point, when hon. Members said to me earlier in our proceedings that this is not public money but private money, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) rightly pointed out:
''We should not fool ourselves that the money is somehow not public money. I equate a charge that everyone must incur universally as being comparable with the council tax''.—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 20 January 2005; c 207]
That is a strong point.
Patrick Mercer: The point has been well made, as my hon. Friend points out—much better than I could make it.
Mr. Jones: I was not making that point, although we could argue about whether this is public or private money. If the hon. Gentleman wants to argue that the money could be better spent elsewhere, he must explain how he would persuade those same people—instead of spending the money on ID cards—to contribute to some new levy for whatever he proposed to spend the money on.
Patrick Mercer: I hope that the Minister will do that for us precisely. I have no doubt that we will be illuminated when he answers the question.
We must be sure that the money to be spent on ID cards will be spent effectively and we also need assurance on the question whether it might be better spent in other directions. I would be grateful if the Minister convinced me of that. Any number of agencies need, and would be grateful for, extra sums to make them more effective in the war on terror.
Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): I have had a chance to reflect and I had a look at last week's discussions in Hansard. I believe that the Minister said in our informal session earlier that he has put the answers to the questions I posed in the post. Did he say that or not?
Mr. Browne: I did what I undertook to do. I wrote to hon. Members, answering all the outstanding points that I undertook to the Chairman to answer. I copied that letter to all members of the Committee. I know that it was delivered through the House of Commons mail because my hon. Friends already have their copies. Indeed, last night, some of them were showing me their letter in the Lobby of the House of Commons. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman's post is handled in the same way as that of all other hon. Members, he will have the letter.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: On a point of order, Mr. Conway. I do not want to make a great issue of this, but it is odd that Government Members on this Committee have got their copy, but Opposition Members have not. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Woking, who is meticulous, says from
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a sedentary position that he has not got his. I have not got mine either. It would be helpful if such documents were put on the Table, so that members of the Committee could have access to them when they arrive in the Room.
The Chairman: I have received a copy of that letter from the Minister in my post this morning, but obviously I do not know what has happened to other hon. Members' copies. If another copy is available, it might be put on the Table during this morning's sitting to help the Committee in its deliberations.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: It would have been helpful to have got that information, because it would have helped this discussion. Perhaps the answers are in that correspondence.
Mr. Browne: If the hon. Gentleman looks across to the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor), he will see that he has his copy, which he must have got through the channels used by my hon. Friends. Of course, it is for the Clerk to decide whether correspondence to the Chairman is copied and put on the Table. I have no objection to that being done.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: That is very helpful. I am sorry if the Minister has already provided the answers to the questions that I am about to ask, but we need to have those answers on the record.
As I was saying at the end of the last sitting, the individual cost of the ID cards will depend critically on how many cards are issued. It would be helpful if the Minister intervened to let us know whether that figure is in the correspondence, because that will critically affect what I am about to say.
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Mr. John Taylor (Solihull) (Con): I have been trying to follow with care my hon. Friend's remarks. He inquires as to how many cards are likely to be issued. Does he not agree that that is the complete unknown? It is the ultimate X factor.
My mind is not finally made up on these issues. However, if the system is voluntary, the number of people who will choose to participate must remain unmeasurable at this time, unless another, different element begins to operate—namely, people in the private sector begin to require an identity card before they provide their services at cost. I have in mind my recent experience of buying a new motor car.
The Chairman: Order. I hate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, as he is a very experienced Member of the House. However, his intervention is long. He can, of course, catch my eye to make his contribution, because that is the nature of the Committee. However, before we go down the car route, I should say that that would be an intervention on the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown). I will be more than happy to call the hon. Gentleman next to tell us more about his experience.
Mr. Taylor: There is an end to my anecdote about my motor car, and I shall return to it when I find a better and broader opportunity. At this stage, I shall
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content myself by asking my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold how anybody could know how many applications there will be for the identity cards. The whole of society might turn its back on them, or everybody might want to have them along with everybody else. How can we know how many applications there will be?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has put his finger on the nub of the issue. That is exactly what I would expect from somebody with a forensic lawyer's brain, such as himself. He is absolutely right. We do not know how many cards will be issued. Unfortunately, for the purposes of this Committee and of discussing this matter, we have to make assumptions about numbers and figures. All we can do is work on the best possible assumptions and try to come to some conclusions.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: May I make my central point? I shall then happily give way to the hon. Lady.
I have done a little research since the last sitting. I find from the Office for National Statistics website that the total UK population is 59.2 million, higher than I had imagined—I had thought that it was 55 million or 56 million. That figure shows that the population is growing.
Mr. Taylor: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: If my hon. Friend will contain himself, I shall give way to everybody in a minute or two. The number of under-16s, who will not be required to register for an ID card, is some 12 million. I shall give way to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), as I have to find my calculations.
Kate Hoey: Is all this not irrelevant? The Minister has said, quite honestly, that no one should vote for the Bill if they do not understand that the identity card will be compulsory. We are talking about how many cards will be issued and so on. However, those voting for the Bill want a compulsory identity card. That is why the hon. Member for Winchester and many Labour Members voted against the principle of the Bill.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful for the hon. Lady's intervention. I should like to deal with that point in a minute. I want to stick to figures and costs for the time being, to keep a logical semblance to what I am saying.
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