Mr.
Stuart: The Minister has told us that for the first three
years a maximum of 250,000 cards a year will be issued, and that
thereafter, up to 2019, he expects that figure to rise. Let us say that
it was 300,000 cards a year. That would mean that fewer than 3 million
ID cards would be issued between now and 2019 at a cost of well over
£4 billion. At that rate, each ID card issued would cost more
than £1,000. It may be that fact that makes the Minister so loth
to give straight answers to straight
questions.
James
Brokenshire: Certainly, the Minister and the Home Office
need to give further details on the issue, because many people have
made suggestions as to how much the cost will be, with some suggesting
that it may run into thousands of pounds. I am sure that the Minister
will be able to clarify whether that is correct or not. There is
clearly a lot of
uncertainty. The
issue is not only about understanding the cost of ID cards and of the
issuing process. If the issue is about encouraging people to volunteer
for next year’s must-have asset of an ID card, there will
presumably be some sort of promotion or advertising, or some sort of
campaign to sit alongside it. I hope that the Minister will give an
estimation of those costs and of the extent to which those marginal
costs have been factored into the Home Office’s calculation in
arriving at the £30 figure. That figure sounds as though it has
been plucked out of the air, rather than approached rationally in
relation to the likely rate of return and the time period for that
return. It seems to be a number that has been created for the purposes
of this Committee and not much
more. Will
the Minister give an indication of what he expects the price of an ID
card will be in 2011? I know that the Government are somewhat reluctant
to provide figures for 2011 onwards, but it would be useful to
understand whether there will be a significant cost increase. It is all
very well, as a special introductory offer, to try to get people to
take things up at a loss-leader price of £30. However, if the
charge is going to increase significantly, £30 does not give a
true impression of what the market—the Government seem to be
trying to create a market in ID cards—truly is in terms of the
take-up of ID
cards. The
national identity scheme delivery plan indicated that the £30
level of fee will apply until the end of next year. Does the Minister
anticipate a staggered increase beyond that, or will the £30
figure be retained beyond 2010? Will he confirm the status of all the
necessary contracts drawn up to administer and produce the ID cards?
Reports over the past fortnight suggest that the contract for the
design and manufacture of ID cards has been delayed for a year. Will
the Minister confirm that that is the case, and what is the current
anticipated time scale in relation to some of those contracts? Perhaps
he could also share what penalties might be applied should those
contracts be broken. What value for money is sought to be applied in
relation to such circumstances?
Will the
Minister also explain the assumptions he made in terms of the overall
cost when arriving at the £30 figure envisaged by the statutory
instrument? Given that the Home Secretary has emphasised the use of ID
cards for proving age, what consultation has the Minister carried out
with existing providers of Home Office-approved age verification
schemes for the self-same purpose? It is interesting that the Minister
was talking about the issuance of the cards to 16-year-olds. If that is
the case, people would effectively be proving that they were under age,
rather than proving they were of the age to buy a number of
age-restricted products and services.
Is the
£30 cost intended to be competitive with those existing
providers? Do the Government envisage that the existing proof-of-age
card schemes will continue to operate? Or is the Home Office now trying
to de-prioritise the age verification cards at a time when they are
starting to gain greater recognition and use? There is some confusion
here, given that the measure is supposed to be about proving
identity—effectively, proving age—when there are already
proof-of-age schemes that exist, which the Home Office is accrediting
and using. It seems as if the ID card may be undermining the
very schemes that the Home Office has already established for the same
purpose. This issue is about the ministerial statements and some of the
reported information in the press that suggests it is about proof of
age. It seems to be somewhat perverse.
On the issues
of fees and cost, will the Minister update us on the cost of providing
ID cards to British citizens? The Minister has made reference to the
May cost report to Parliament, which showed an increase of £160
million, from £4.785 billion to £4.945 billion, although
I recognise that that covers all the costs associated with ID cards and
biometric passports. But what impact will the Government’s
policy reversal have on that estimate of costs? That will be important
to understand in the context of where we sit now, rather than where we
sat 48 hours ago.
To what
extent are revenues generated from the fees contemplated by the order
factored into the overall cost estimate? It appears that there has been
some confusion—we certainly have not had clarity
today—about how the income will ameliorate the costs. In other
words, what is the business model that the Government are relying upon?
Given increasing lack of will from the Home Office on the
project—even if No. 10 is still sold on it—what
safeguards has the Home Office negotiated to ensure that the taxpayer
will not be penalised if the scheme is scrapped?
Turning to
the draft Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on
Penalties) Order 2009, not only would one have to pay a fee for
volunteering to obtain an ID card, but one would also volunteer to put
oneself at risk of a fine if one did not give notification of changes
to one’s situation—it gets more attractive by the minute.
Under the draft code of practice on civil penalties, a penalty of up to
£1,000 may be levied for failure by an individual to whom a card
has been issued to notify the Secretary of State of prescribed changes
of circumstances that affect the information held on the ID cards
register, or of errors in that information of which the cardholder is
aware. They will have only 30 working days to challenge the
penalty, and they might not even be aware that a charge is being
levied. Penalties may be sent by e-mail to someone’s last known
e-mail address, and it is deemed to have been received—this is
the penalty—and served on the day on which it is sent. In other
words, the penalty notice may simply be e-mailed to the last known
e-mail address, and that is it. Even if there was an electronic
bounce-back to say that the e-mail had not been received, it simply
would not matter—the penalty would still be valid. I shall be
grateful if the Minister can give us some confirmation as to the
background and the appropriateness—he seems to suggest that
there may be other applications for it already. People are under no
obligation to keep their e-mail address current with the
Government—it is not something that is a requirement to be
notified on the ID cards register, even though there are a host of
other things that are required to be notified. Simply because someone
has changed their e-mail address and does not notify the Government of
that—even though there does not appear to be any obligation to
do so—they are at risk of receiving a penalty they do not know
about, and 30 days later, there is absolutely nothing they can do about
it.
Mr.
Stuart: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be
particularly likely to hit those who become unemployed—people
who had been using a work e-mail address? There may even be people in
this room today who may find themselves in that position in a
year’s time. It is quite unfair for people who have already lost
their job to also find themselves subject to fines that are not passed
on to
them.
James
Brokenshire: We need to understand very clearly what the
practice of all these measures will be and I hope that the Minister
will have time to respond, because it seems quite incredible that
simply because of a change in a person’s e-mail address, which
may be because they have changed employer or, as my hon. Friend said,
because they are now sadly out of work and therefore reliant on a
different e-mail address, or indeed because they do not have an e-mail
address at all, they will be subject to the potential penalties that
are envisaged by the code of practice that sits alongside the order
that is being considered this afternoon.
The order
does various other things. It adds another category of data to the ID
cards register, so that information on referees will now be added.
Paragraph 7.5 of the supporting explanatory memorandum to the Identity
Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order
2009
says: “This
Order sets out a provision to allow us to record information about
referees provided in support of an application by an individual to be
entered in the Register. This will enable further checks to be made
with the referee, in the event that there is doubt about the veracity
of information contained in applications for the purposes of the
Act.” Why
should a referee’s information be added once an ID card has been
issued? In other words, why should it be added to the register? Surely
checks about veracity should have been undertaken before an ID card is
issued, in the same way that checks should be made about referees for
passports or any similar documents. Is not the register supposed to be
about the identity of the ID card holder and not third parties who may
have decided not to volunteer for an ID card in the first
place? Why should the personal details of those third parties end up on
this database without their consent? Also, can the Minister confirm
that the referees will not also be subject to civil penalties for
failing to keep their own details up to
date? The
justification set out in the explanatory memorandum is simply not
sufficient. However, the order attaches penalties for other issues as
well. Even if a person notifies the Secretary of State of changes to
their circumstances, under section 10 of the 2006 Act the Secretary of
State can require, on the basis of their convenience in keeping the ID
cards register up to date, that that person attend at an agreed place
and at a time that the Secretary of State is able to specify, and agree
that they will allow biometric information to be taken about themselves
and recorded and, furthermore, that they will be photographed and will
provide “such
information as may be required by the Secretary of
State”. I
say again that this is all for something that we are now told is
intended to be voluntary and for the ease and convenience of the
citizen and not the
state. The
remaining parts of this order and the third order—the Identity
Cards Act 2006 (Provision of Information without Consent) Regulation
2009—relate to data sharing. Given the key issue of safeguards
on the security of data, because security can be compromised by the
weakest link in the data-sharing chain, can the Minister say on what
basis he is satisfied that all the other Departments to which
information for the national ID cards register will be sent will be
secure? The
Government have claimed that there will be three databases for
recording ID card-related data. However, how can the Minister say with
confidence that there will be security if data leave one environment
and migrate to another? How do the Government expect to ensure that
data collected on the national identity register are retained and
shared
safely? The
bottom line is that this is a policy that has been drifting for some
time and it is without support; indeed, it remains devoid of a solid
purpose or justification. However, the Government seem intent on
pumping more and more public money into a project that, if it is not a
dead parrot, is certainly a white elephant.
The
Minister should face up to reality and withdraw these orders, scrap the
national ID card scheme for UK citizens, focus on delivering biometric
passports and biometric visas for foreign nationals effectively, and
concentrate on policies that will deliver real benefits and value for
money to the public, not in 30 years but
now.
3.34
pm Tom
Brake: It is a pleasure to speak under your
chairmanship today, Mr. Streeter.
I must start
by saying how sorry I feel for the Minister. He managed to deliver his
speech with a very straight face, but I think that we all know the
reality of what he was announcing. It is perhaps a pity that he did not
announce it more briefly than he did, because he has just set out that
this particular policy is the Government’s equivalent of the
cones hotline, in that no one has really identified a need for it and
it will be a costly initiative. In all honesty, the Government would
probably prefer not to proceed with the policy, but they have boxed
themselves into a corner and are having to push forward with it. It
is clear that gone are the days when it was only the Liberal Democrats
who opposed identity cards. We had a U-turn from the Conservatives on
the issue, and now we have a substantial U-turn from the new Home
Secretary, who says that identity cards will be only voluntary, not
mandatory. In some
respects, this debate is completely irrelevant. It is difficult to
build up a head of steam for a debate when we know that the scheme, if
it survives at all, is likely to have a very low take-up. It would be
more honest for the Government simply to say that they were going to
scrap identity cards, including for foreign nationals, and not seek to
tweak the scheme in the way that the Minister set out, for instance by
introducing exemptions for 75-year-olds, and trying to present this as
an identity card that is just about individuals being able to prove
their identity more easily than they can at present with any other
forms of identity that they have. I suspect that the John who was
referred to in the brief read out by the hon. Member for Hornchurch was
the old Home Secretary who was asked to provide a quote to justify this
and did so at length.
There are a
few questions that the Minister must answer. We need much greater
clarity about costs, rather than simply putting forward a figure of
£30 and then saying, “Well, we’re not sure; it
depends on take-up.” The Government made some estimates
originally but clearly, now the scheme is proceeding on a voluntary
basis, those estimates will be completely
inaccurate. As
the hon. Member for Hornchurch pointed out, there will be a need to
promote the scheme, so there may well be other costs that have not been
included. The Government may feel duty-bound to promote the scheme much
more heavily than was intended, because the uptake will be very low, so
we do need to know the level of subsidy. The Minister has restated that
there will be a benefit of £6 billion over 30 years, yet we know
that the basis on which the scheme is proceeding is now completely
different. He has had the honesty to say that, in terms of the uptake,
he will assess the trajectory, which has a nice ring of “Yes
Minister” to it. We can already assess the trajectory of the
take-up of the scheme—it is very much
downwards. I
hope that the Minister, as well as answering hon. Members’
questions, will be able to confirm whether the Government have entered
into or made a commitment on any contracts that are volume based. Will
additional costs or penalties arise because a much smaller number of
people are signing up to the scheme as a result of making identity
cards voluntary? There could be significant cost implications if there
are volume-based costs or targets in any of the contracts the
Government have
signed. We
heard the Minister describe the advantages of identity cards for people
working airside; but equally, given that we know that many such people
will not take them up, those advantages cannot be as significant as the
Minister set out. It has been rightly highlighted that the cards will
be provided free of charge in two airports, but it seems as though
people in other airports will be charged for them. I am not sure
whether that could be challenged, but we certainly require the
Minister’s detailed explanation of why that difference
exists. We
have heard about the penalties that people will be subject to for
entering voluntarily into the scheme and about how many people will
want to do that. We have
also heard about the difficulties in notifying people of penalties and
relying on e-mail addresses that might well be out of date, meaning
that people would have no awareness of the penalty being sent to them.
We know that there is an issue of referee details being provided
without their consent, and we have significant concerns about data
security, which is an ongoing issue for the Government, dealing with
large quantities of data, given their inability to secure those data
effectively. The list of
questions, queries and challenges that might have been put to the
Minister could have kept us here for the rest of the day and into the
early hours of tomorrow morning, although I am sure that that is
something that none of us wants to entertain. It would be simpler for
the Minister to confess that he cannot see this scheme being rolled out
effectively, that it will be highly costly and that it will provide no
advantages in tackling issues such as terrorism, which was its original
justification. It would be much simpler for everyone concerned if this
particular proposal was pulled
now. 3.41
pm
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