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Mr. Taylor: I have waited patiently for this opportunity. Inasmuch as my hon. Friend does not know how many people are going to take up the card, I challenge him—although I rarely do—on the precision with which he stated the population of the country.
One of the few vestiges of a good argument that the Minister possesses is that we do not know how many people there are in the country. That could just about be an argument in favour of identity cards. Will he revisit the question of the population of the country? I do not think that he knows what that is any more than anybody else does.
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The Chairman: Order. I am sure that the hon. Member for Cotswold will not be tempted to debate how many people live in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, because that is not relevant to the amendment before the Committee. That may be a matter for a clause stand part debate, but it does not come within this group of amendments. I am sure he will not be tempted, but will return to the charge for issuing the card.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am grateful for your guidance, Mr. Conway.
There is a good and logical reason for examining the subject, and that is that the number of people in the country has a direct correlation with the number of people likely to take up the card. All we can do in Committee—I take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull—is to make the best assumptions that we can, but we do need to know how many of the cards are likely to be issued. Nobody knows. My hon. Friend is right, that has to be an assumption. Once we make some sort of assumption as to the number of people likely to be applying, we can then make some assumption on the Government's figures. Dividing one by the other, we can get to a likely cost for the card. That is where I am getting to with my argument. That is why the number of people in the country is important.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We do not know precisely how many people there are in the country. These figures are the best we could find, from the website of the Government's Office for National Statistics. We know that in the next 30 years the population will age. We know that the percentage of older people aged 65 and over increased from 13 per cent. in 1971 to 16 per cent. in 2002, and is projected to rise to 23 per cent. by 2031. The population will age. I do not know how that ageing process and the average dynamics of the population will affect the take-up of identity cards—whether it will be more or less. My hon. Friend may have a view on that. Perhaps, as people get older and receive more in pensions—if this Government does not take them away—they will have more need to travel and for passports.
Mr. Taylor: Is my hon. Friend missing another factor that ought to be taken into account in his calculation? If the identity card scheme comes in, will not a lot of people go away?
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I do not know what my hon. Friend means by that comment. Does he mean that those people will go underground or abroad?
Mr. Taylor: Both.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My hon. Friend says both, from a sedentary position.
Mr. David Curry (Skipton and Ripon) (Con): One or the other.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: As my right hon. Friend says, they cannot be both—underground and abroad. Perhaps they could go underground abroad.
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Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend is talking about the reliability of population statistics. Our annual debate on the distribution of local government funding shows the extent to which there is serious miscalculation of the population in the various boroughs. Not merely is the ONS incapable of counting population, on the last occasion it mislaid about 12,000 houses in Manchester. The reliability of the figures is very uncertain, so it would be unwise to base any costs on the ONS's calculations.
The Chairman: Order. I am sure that, when the hon. Gentleman replies to his right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) and his hon. Friend the Member for Solihull, he will deal with how these figures relate to the issue of the charge—free or otherwise—according to the amendment. This is not a stand part debate. We are debating amendment No. 44.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The amendment is specifically about the costs of the cards. I did not expect to get taken down the road of debate on the population. I was just trying to make an assumption.
Mr. Chris Mole (Ipswich) (Lab): As the subject of going underground was mentioned, I thought that this was an appropriate time for me to intervene.
One of the difficulties with the hon. Gentleman's contribution is that it is not clear whether he is trying to get to the global cost or the unit cost of the cards. For the global cost, the total number of people taking up the card is relevant in terms of the multiplier of the individual cost. However, for the unit cost, how the increasing number of take-up reduces the cost of manufacture and production needs to be considered. In such matters, there is usually an inverse exponential curve so that the greater the number, the lower the cost; and as a certain number is passed—I should have thought that 55 million was well past it—the unit cost of production will have levelled out.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that contribution, because he is absolutely right, and that is exactly the territory that I want to cover. I have been misled down the path of temptation on a number of occasions, but I will try not to be so again.
Mr. Taylor rose—
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am being tempted again.
Mr. Taylor: In the good point that the hon. Member for Ipswich (Mr. Mole) so incisively made, he described the relationship between total numbers and take-up. That leads us to another complete unknown: how many providers of private sector services will require the production of a card to provide those services? That will be an impeller of take-up that the Committee cannot possible measure.
While I am on my feet making what is for me a very rare intervention—
The Chairman: Order. I am sorry, but the intervention is long and it is not relevant to the amendment.
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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I will try not to be led down the path of temptation, although I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments.
I want to stick to the agenda outlined by the hon. Member for Ipswich, because he put his finger on the nub of this issue. We have to make some assumptions on numbers of the population. For the purposes of what I am about to say, I am making an assumption that we have 59.2 million people, as registered by the ONS. I take on board the points of other Committee members that there may be many more underground, but these ONS figures are the best that we have. There are 12 million people under 16, and if we subtract one from t'other, that leaves an adult population of 47.2 million people who are required under the terms of this measure to have an identity card if they wish to apply for a passport.
The hon. Member for Vauxhall took us into another debate on whether or not there is compulsion. Unfortunately, she has left the Committee, but the Minister made it clear that there is compulsion.
We can only go on the figures currently provided to us by the Government. As they have given them to us, I presume that they are the best available figures at present, although I will cast aspersion on them. The principal figures are an estimated annual cost of £415 million for biometric passports by 2008-09, an £85 million estimated annual cost for operating ID cards on top of passports, and a £50 million estimated annual cost to provide verification of services.
Those figures given to us by the Government are undisputed, and the Minister confirmed them at the end of the last sitting, although whether they are correct is a different matter. They add up to £550 million per annum over the 10 years covered by the scheme. Whether or not the Minister likes it, the figure is £5.5 billion. Taking the 47.2 million of the population, and taking 80 per cent. of that—
The Chairman: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman when he is in full flow, but if he looks at the report of our proceedings for the fourth sitting on Thursday afternoon, he will see that the comments that he is now making are almost identical to those that he made in column 209. We are continuing Thursday's debate, so he has already made these comments in this debate. I must draw that to the hon. Gentleman's attention, because the Chair cannot allow him to do that. I am sure that he will not wish to repeat the arguments that he has already made to the Committee, albeit on a different date, but still in this debate.
9.45 am
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The problem at the time was that I did not have the accurate population figures to hand. Dividing one by t'other—the 37.76 million, the figure that I did not have at our previous sitting—brings us to a cost of £116 per person for the card. That is different territory from the £85 per card that the Government recently estimated. Even the figure of £85 has increased substantially during the months in which the debate has taken place. If the sum is £116 now, what on earth will it be in seven years, when the cards are introduced? Will the figure be double or treble
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that? I do not know. However, I do know that £116 is a large sum indeed, especially for constituents who are either on benefits or fixed and low incomes. It will be a big proportion of their income, and if they want to travel abroad to see relatives, who they might not otherwise see, and apply for a passport for a one-off occasion, £116 is a great deal of money.
Mr. Malins: That is why I tabled an amendment to add the words ''free of charge''. There is a significant point to be made. If the cost is likely to be in excess of £100, does that mean that those who are poor and in receipt of benefits must, as night follows day, receive a substantial discount, otherwise they will not be able to pay it? Thus, the cost must be found from somewhere else, so for those of more moderate means the bill may be much higher indeed. Yet, we do not know.
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