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Lord Adonis: My Lords, it is precisely to meet those concerns that we have developed the Building Schools for the Future programme, with Partnerships for Schools as a dedicated organisation that can work closely with local authorities to expedite arrangements with schools and give schools much better professional help in developing their capital strategies.
Lord Tebbit: My Lords, did the Minister notice that he did not answer the question put to him by my noble friend? He did not ask whether the schools complied with the regulations; he asked how many of them lack kitchens where food can be prepared on the premises for the children. Will the noble Lord answer that question?
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I understand that the regulations do provide for that, but I will confirm that in writing for the noble Lord.
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Violent Crime Reduction Bill
3.4 pm
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and ordered to be printed.
Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend Lord Bach.
Moved, That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:
Clauses 98 to 101.—(Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton).
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Regulation of Financial Services (Land Transactions) Bill
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton.
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Moved, That the order of commitment of 17 October last be discharged and that the Bill be committed to a Committee of the Whole House.—(Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton).
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Identity Cards Bill
3.5 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Scotland of Asthal): My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [The National Identity Register]:
Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 1:
(a) whether the costs and measures needed to establish an identity card scheme are proportionate to the benefits such a system would bring;
(b) whether his department, or any agency or person instructed by him, has the technical capacity to devise and deliver an identity card scheme that meets the criteria of being—
(i) fully secure;
(ii) fully accurate;
(iii) fully reliable;
(iv) affordable in the light of other charges to public funds;
(v) sustainable in the light of anticipated technological developments; and
(c) whether, if in his view it meets the criteria set out in paragraph (b), it is the most effective means of achieving the purpose set out in subsection (4),
and, having conducted that review, to lay an annual report before Parliament, explaining the reasons for his conclusions, before incurring any additional public expenditure or issuing any new order under this Act.
(1A) The Secretary of State must have regard at all times to any resolution of, or any consideration by, each House of Parliament in relation to his report under subsection (1).
(1B) Having regard to subsections (1) and (1A), it shall be the responsibility of the Secretary of State"
The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 1, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 10 and 12. At last, we have the opportunity—our first in this House—to debate in detail the Bill which adjusts the fundamental relationship between the individual and the state.
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The bedrock of this Government's plans for ID cards is the construction and maintenance of the national identity register. So we have tabled amendments to give the Government the opportunity to answer a diverse number of questions about the operation of that register. Examples of the issues raised are as follows. Who should be given the opportunity and duty to maintain the register? Why have the Government chosen this particular model of ID card? What will the purposes of the register be and what will the Government's priorities be in determining them? How will individual citizens be able easily and freely to verify the information held on them? How will the Government ensure the security of information on the register? In addition, of course, they will need to justify the inclusion of certain data on the register, and we will need to question the manner in which the register is maintained.
I have listed but a few of the issues raised in Clause 1 before we have the delight of going on to later clauses. I outline those issues because I appreciate that Members of the Committee will have seen that a large number of amendments has been tabled. Throughout, instead of just seeking to leave out a particular subsection, I have tried to write in what I am challenging the Government to explain. I appreciate that if I did not do so it would be particularly difficult for those who work so hard on the Back Benches to work out what on earth I am trying to get at. Of course, the Minister has the advantage of professional civil servants behind her, who can plot my every move and thought.
I now turn to the issue in my first group of amendments. These are probing amendments, and I say that to reassure the noble Baroness's friends on the Benches behind her. They are probing not least because, as I speak, the Home Secretary is addressing a meeting of Conservative Peers within the House to explain to them his proposals on the Terrorism Bill. In those circumstances, I feel that it would be most inappropriate to table anything other than a series of probing amendments.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way and for the constructive way in which she is approaching the Bill. Can I ask her to confirm that it is the Opposition's view that the Bill should be dealt with constructively clause by clause and that no attempt should be made to undermine or torpedo something that was in the Government's manifesto at the last election?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has done me a great favour in referring to the manifesto. On these Benches, we recognise the Salisbury convention—we live with it and work with it. We also saw the precise wording of the Labour Party manifesto. In another place, the noble Lord's previous colleague, Mr Neil Gerrard, a Labour Member of Parliament, also read those words carefully. He brought forward a vital element for constructive debate and I hope we shall be able to achieve resolution on that point, and on others, during the course of our very constructive proceedings.
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I shall return to my first group of amendments. After three minutes, noble Lords will be glad that we have got that far. The amendments ask the Government to set out their reasons for believing that the scheme is technically deliverable in a way that can be guaranteed to be fully accurate, secure, reliable, affordable in the light of other public spending requirements and sustainable into the future. Amendment No. 1 requires the Government to review the efficacy of the scheme annually—I shall deal with efficiency later—and to set out whether the costs and measures that they have used to establish the scheme are proportionate to the alleged benefits that the Government say will be enjoyed. It also requires the Government to set out annually the reasons why their objectives could not more effectively be achieved by other means. We believe that the amendment will act as a continual duty on the Government to be accountable to Parliament for the operation of the scheme.
Do the Government agree with the Home Affairs Select Committee of another place when it concluded in paragraph 197 of its report published in July 2004 that,
"The type of card to be used is a decision of the same order of importance as the architecture of the database, since it has consequences for issues such as how the card will be used and the number of readers and the infrastructure needed"?
The Select Committee of another place also observed that some of the Government's choices, such as the nature of the chip, follow on from the decision to use the passport as the basis for an ID card rather than any independent assessment of what will be the most appropriate for an ID card itself. It was concerned that the Home Office has taken key decisions without any external reference, technical assessment or public debate. How will the Government seek to avoid the problems of other major procurement projects by reflecting those different requirements in the design from an early stage? Given the Government's often repeated claims about the security of using ID cards, what consideration have the Government given to protecting the ID card system, should access to the central database be disabled for whatever reason?
Amendment No. 10 raises questions about the security of the system. The rewards for a successful attack would be enormous—let us be under no illusions about that. People will try to gain access to the system. Can the Minister say what decisions have been taken about what will happen to a corrupted database? Anyone who uses a computer, as noble Lords do, will know that an IT system can crash. A network can slow down at peak-load periods. If an ID system is dependent solely on checks being made online—that is that the card cannot be relied on to be authentic in itself—the system will be hugely vulnerable. Do the Government accept that it should be possible to check the card securely offline? If not, how do they propose that cards can be used securely offline?
What process will there be for making reliable visual checks? Surely, the reality is that many checks will have to be visual, whether by a shop assistant, a police
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officer or others. If the card is to be useful for the police, how do the Government propose to ensure that a forensic, non-erasable record of the card's history is maintained so that it can be useful in criminal cases involving attempts to alter the card fraudulently? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the design of ID cards is flexible enough to accommodate future requirements, such as the storage capacity, which perhaps cannot be anticipated at the start of what has to be a 10-year programme?
We shall have the opportunity under future amendments to examine more closely the Government's projections of the costs of setting up the scheme. It is not appropriate for me to go down that path on this amendment, which considers an annual assessment of how far the benefits are worth the costs. By the time we come to debate the thorny issue of costs, I hope that the Government will have provided a more detailed version of the KPMG report than was tabled in the Library last week in response to my request to the Minister's office. I am grateful to her for the steps that she has taken so far, but I believe that we need to flesh out some of the detail more thoroughly.
3.15 pm
My amendment would require the Government to be accountable annually to Parliament, justifying their expenditure against sensible criteria. Surely that is sensible and necessary. These amendments were originally grouped by the Government. I tried to ungroup them but decided that, to help the Committee, they should be regrouped. Therefore, I apologise for the length of my speech.
Amendment No. 12 considers the reliability of the recording of biometrics and asks how reliable they are, both individually and combined. The Minister's colleague, Mr McNulty, recently admitted that there are problems in capturing accurately the biometrics of certain people—for example, those with brown eyes and those who are bald. The Cabinet Office stated in its report that,
"around 10 to 15 per cent of genuine people fail the biometric tests set at the highest level of corroboration".
That study was published in July 2002—some while ago. Do the Government intend to operate at the "highest level of corroboration"? What assessment have the Government made of the categories of people who are likely to present particular difficulty in relation to the capturing of biometrics? What estimate has been made of the number of people in those categories? How do the Government intend to overcome those difficulties, and what is the estimated cost of doing so?
What is the latest advice that the Government have received about their possible liability where negligence is established in relation to an inaccurate entry in the National Identity Register, and loss is suffered by an individual as a result of misidentification? The noble Baroness's reply to that final question—noble Lords will be pleased to hear—will help to inform our later important debate on Amendment No. 70 to Clause 3,
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which is tabled in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Dholakia and Lord Phillips of Sudbury. With that raft of questions, I beg to move.
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