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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend while he makes such a cogent case. The problem is that we as a society, and particularly Government operations, have become very dependent on computer systems. To give an example of what is happening at this very moment, the Child Support Agency's computer system has broken down. Even when it has all the facts of a case, it is having to do its calculations manually, which takes 20 weeks. Therefore, some constituents will not have their money for that period. If such computer systems are liable to break down, how will the computer system cost for ID cards be able to be calculated, and can we be sure that the system will work anyway?
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Mr. Curry: That is a powerful case, and I too was going to cite the CSA. For the most part it is mothers who come to our surgeries and say that years have gone by and there has not been a dicky-bird from the father, he cannot be traced and no money has been paid. They are some of the disappearing people. I do not know whether they are counted in the ONS figures and whether they will have ID cards. I am against ID cards, but if they track down miscreant fathers who dodge paying for their children's upkeep, that might be one good reason for them. Again, that is an instance of the unreliability of the figures and the difficulty of tracing people if they decide that they do not want to be traced.
My hon. Friend has fairly said that the cost to the individual will depend very much on how many cards are issued. I found myself in the slightly surreal world where we have compulsory ID cards that are voluntary; one volunteers for them. They are compulsory, but people do not have to carry them. Will the card be like my driving licence, where if I am stopped by the police for an inadvertent and innocent misdemeanour I have a week to present it to the police station of my choice?
The Chairman: Order. The right hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member of this House. He and I both know what he is about. He is not talking about the amendment, but about whether he should carry the card or produce it. As he well knows, none of that is related to the amendment. I am sure that he will now address his remarks as to whether the card should be issued free of charge, as his colleagues are proposing.
Mr. Curry: I am grateful for that, because I clearly did not join up my sentiments in the way that I ought to have done. I was making the point that I will be charged for something. I cannot quite make up my mind whether it is something material or some sort of chimera, which I need or need not carry and which I may or may not be asked for. Apparently, I stand more chance of being asked for it at my doctor's surgery than I do if I were committing a major offence. I find that difficult to get my mind round.
The Minister has always answered very fully. He has said that the Government reserve the option of not requiring everybody to have an ID card or to register, and my hon. Friend began to explore that. I thought that he would go further and I will now do so. The Minister said that the need to register and the eventual requirement for a card will start at the age of 16. At some stage the Government may feel that 16 is too old or too young for that requirement. They could raise the age to 18, which is the voting age, or lower it to 14, because they think that kids grow up and become independent faster now than they used to.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: One way of painlessly introducing ID cards—if that is what we want to do—is to give everybody an identity card number at birth free of charge. In that way, within a relatively short period of time, most of the population would have got a card.
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Mr. Curry: That would be a way of cracking the issue in the overwhelming number of cases.
Let us consider the elderly spectrum of the population in the United Kingdom. The Government will know how many people—the over-60s—receive the winter fuel allowance. I have been in receipt of it this year. It is a dotty idea that somebody in reasonably, though not excessively, paid employment such as myself should get a winter fuel allowance, but I have done. I thank the Government very much for that £200. It is not as much as the cheque that I put in the post to the Chancellor, but I received it. I was not asked whether I wanted it, but I was told that I was going to get it.
The Government could decide that over-60s should not have the card. We all know that there are special provisions for television licences when someone reaches a greater age. As we know, all the parties are niggling about whether there should be special provision in terms of council tax for people who have reached a certain age. My father is 87, and his capacity to commit acts of terror is somewhat limited now; indeed, his capacity to get downstairs unaided is fairly limited. Is it seriously intended that people of, for example, 80 and over will be required to have an identity card? That is a significant element of the population. The unit cost of this will depend considerably on measures that the Government have said are within their discretion, such as how many people will be required to register and will eventually need to have a card.
Mr. Taylor: I have admired by right hon. Friend for many years, but it is possible that he is making a false point about age. Will older people who want to drive a motor car be able to obtain a driving licence if they do not have an identity card? If they want to buy a motor car, will not the rules against money laundering require them to produce an ID card before they can get a finance agreement to buy a car, let alone drive it?
The Chairman: The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon is not going to reply to that point.
Mr. Curry: I am certainly not, and I would not dream of mentioning that what my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull said would strike terror into the heart of my 87-year-old father when he buys his next Volkswagen Polo. You are very wise, Mr. Conway, to direct me not to trespass down that route.
However, it is true that the Government have the discretion to exempt people from the requirement to register, and if it does that by categories, that will have an impact on the unit cost of the card.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: My right hon. Friend will have heard me say that in later clauses the Government propose to allow pensioners to have passports free of charge. Unless the Minister tells us otherwise, it follows from that that pensioners will be free of any charge in terms of the identity card. I have already adduced the argument that the population is ageing, so it follows that the cost to the general taxpayer of the identity cards will be greater. We need to hear something about that from the Minister.
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Mr. Curry: I cannot add anything to my hon. Friend's lucid comments on that.
However, I want to rehearse again the problem of making sure that we know what numbers we are talking about. There are many cases where statistics that are crucial for the funding of public services are wrong. We know that happened in Westminster; the ONS lost many thousands of inhabitants, which caused a real problem in the funding of that London borough, and that had to be corrected. In Richmond in North Yorkshire—in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague)—there are major military installations, and there is a perennial problem of counting the heads of the people who live there, for funding purposes. I was not joking when I said that a whole area of Manchester did not figure at all in the ONS statistics. That included the real estate; even those people's addresses seem to have disappeared. However, the Post Office managed to deliver letters to them, even though they did not exist as far as other Departments were concerned. It is crucial to know whom we are talking about, if we are to make the necessary cost calculations.
Will the costs be uniform across the United Kingdom? There is a wide range of services with regard to which people in Scotland appear to receive preferential treatment; the services are provided at lower cost than in other parts of the UK, or they are free, or they are available in a different way from in England. In the Queen's Speech debate, the leader of the Scottish National party challenged the Prime Minister on whether there would be differential application of this measure. The Prime Minister responded by saying that there is a logic to devolution that would have to work through the system. I would be very concerned if my constituents were hit yet again by being required to have their card in a different way from in other parts of the country. This issue is crucial for individuals.
We have all been talking as if the cards somehow appear by magic, so that we sign a cheque or a credit card and then we get them. There are as well capital set-up costs for every single place where the card might be required to be read. That is where the record of all Governments—not just this one—is simply dreadful, partly because they do not seem able to write a specification effectively. That may be worst in military procurement, but IT procurements for civil jobs seem to run massively out of control. My little book of words from the NAO relates to me on a weekly basis how all those things go wrong.
Once embarked on—because we are not turning back—the argument will always be to find the extra millions to put things right. Those extra millions will keep cropping up over and over. Before we know where we are, there will be a massive public cost in capital expenditure. The cost to the individual could start escalating significantly. All this for a card I do not want.
Mr. Malins: We have had a long debate, and an important one. I rise now to make my concluding observations on amendment No. 44, on the cost of the scheme.
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Cost is one of the fundamental issues of the Bill. There are others. If one was to summarise the three or four most important issues, cost is right up there, towards the top. That is why the debate has been important and useful.
I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold, my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon and my hon. Friends the Members for Newark and for Solihull for their different and differing contributions towards a most important debate.
I said at the beginning of my remarks—last Thursday, I think—that the debate was intended to enable us to look into the real costs of the scheme. I said that it was probably the most significant debate that we were going to have. I asked:
''Is the cost of the register—and the cards, readers . . . —worth it?''
I posed these questions to the Minister:
''Has it been considered''—
and, if so, by whom—
''whether the same amount could be better spent in other ways to achieve the same objectives, in particular, the principal objective, which must be the reduction of terrorist activity?''—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 20 January 2005; c. 198.]
I asked the Minister about the police and the security services. I asked, in particular, what their arguments were. I asked whether the police had discussed with the Government other ways of spending the same money, but in a preferred way.
I have to say that I am disappointed that the Minister, who usually gives such comprehensive and full answers, did not think that he was able to deal with any of those questions in his response. If the total cost of the scheme is to be £5 billion—on the issue of costs, this morning my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold has done a huge service—all we are asking is whether anybody, at any stage, has considered whether such a sum might instead bring us 25,000 extra police, an extra 1,000 in the security services or stronger border controls? Have they compared the two and said which is better value for money? I have not yet had a comprehensive answer to that point.
When I asked the Minister, among other questions, for his best estimate of the total cost of the scheme, he referred me—not improperly but, if I may say so gently, slightly unhelpfully—to the regulatory impact assessment. We have all had the benefit of reading that assessment, which, however, I do not think tells the whole story.
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The advantage of having had a weekend to reflect on last week's debate is that other important points about cost have emerged. A particular issue relating to my probing amendment on the card being provided free, which has not been answered—my hon. Friends will correct me if I am wrong—is whether everyone will have to pay the same amount.
This morning my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold concluded in an intervention, which I do not think has been challenged by the Minister, that the cost of the card could be about £116, based on the figures that the Minister helpfully provided the other day,
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which I do not need to repeat. I am sure that it will not have escaped the notice of any Committee member present that the Government's current best estimate of the cost to the individual of a combined passport-and-identity-card package that is valid for 10 years is £85. I may have got it wrong, but if they are saying that that is their current best estimate, and my hon. Friend's figure of £116 has not been challenged, that may be a pointer to the fact that the Government cannot be accurate in what they are saying.
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