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Police (Northern Ireland) Bill [HL]
3.06 pm
Lord Laird: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision about the composition of the police force in Northern Ireland. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Laird.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.
Dynamic Demand Appliances Bill [HL]
Lord Redesdale: My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision about dynamic demand appliances. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a first time.—(Lord Redesdale.)
On Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.
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Tax Law Rewrite Bills
The Chairman of Committees (Lord Brabazon of Tara): My Lords, in moving this Motion, I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in thanking the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, for his outstanding and valuable service on this very important yet little-known committee. I beg to move the first Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Lord Newton of Braintree be appointed a member of the Select Committee in the place of the Lord Howe of Aberavon.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Works of Art
The Chairman of Committees: My Lords, I beg to move the second Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Baroness Hilton of Eggardon be appointed a member of the Select Committee in the place of the Viscount Chandos.—(The Chairman of Committees.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
National Insurance Contributions Bill
Lord McKenzie of Luton: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Bill be committed to a Grand Committee.—(Lord McKenzie of Luton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Council Tax (New Valuation Lists for England) Bill
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Andrews, I beg to move the Motion standing in her name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the Bill be committed to a Grand Committee.—(Lord Bassam of Brighton.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Identity Cards Bill
3.08 pm
Clause 1 [The National Identity Register]:
Baroness Noakes moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 3, at beginning insert "Subject to section "(Commencement: report on costs and benefits),"
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 1, I will speak to the three other amendments in the group, which stand in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury.
Amendment No. 1 returns to the issue of the costs of the ID cards scheme. Our Committee stage was unusual, in that we failed to get any useful information, despite spending several hours on the matter. In fact, our only achievement was to establish with more precision what the Government would not tell us about costs.
I make no criticism of the Minister. It is clear that she has been operating to a very controlled brief. Her responses in the Chamber and to Written Questions have had a formulaic quality. But I do criticise the Government for imposing this highly restricted brief on the noble Baroness and preventing your Lordships' House gaining a deeper understanding of the costs of the ID scheme.
The Government have been praying in aid commercial confidentiality and have said that to release further information would prejudice their ability to get value for money from procurement. For example, the Minister said in Committee on 19 December at col. 1563 of Hansard:
We simply do not understand this. If the Government are procuring in competitive markets, the bidding behaviour that the noble Baroness describes is simply not credible. I know this, not least from my background as a bidder in the cutthroat market of professional services. We are clearly dealing with a competitive marketplace. The Minister herself said, also on 19 December at col. 1563, that the Government needed to,
Exactly. It seems that the Government do not believe in the power of competitive markets.
We believe that it is unprecedented that a Bill with such major consequences for individuals in this country should proceed without Parliament being able to scrutinise the financial consequences. This is so whether the costs are borne by individuals through charging mechanisms or by general taxation. I have not heard the Government offer any precedents for this.
As I explained in Committee, we on these Benches are mindful that the Government have some degree of manifesto cover for the Bill. In the name of responsible opposition, we have sought a way for the Bill to proceed through your Lordships' House, while also addressing the very real lack of parliamentary scrutiny of costs. That is what the amendments seek to do.
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Amendment No. 1 is a paving amendment making the powers in the Bill subject to a new clause after Clause 45, which is contained in Amendment No. 123. Subsection (1) of the new clause says:
"No provision of this Act, except sections 38, 39 and 45 . . . shall be brought into force until the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament a report in accordance with subsection (2), and that report has been approved by the House of Commons".
I should explain that the references to Clauses 38, 39 and 45 are to allow Clauses 38 and 39, which are not an intrinsic part of the ID scheme, to be implemented separately.
Subsection (2) goes on to describe the report as containing a cost estimate covering both capital and revenue costs and a statement of expected benefits. These subsections are the heart of the amendment. They give the other place an opportunity to return to the issue of costs and benefits before the Act is brought into effect.
Noble Lords will note that we have carefully confined the power to approve the report on costs and benefits to the other place. We want there to be no suggestion that your Lordships' House is straying beyond its constitutional boundaries.
Subsection (3) of the new clause is rather technical, but ensures that the information on cost makes plain not only annual or revenue costs but also the capital costs. We have received a single figure for annual running costs of £584 million, but we have received no information whatever about capital costs.
Subsection (4) requires the cost estimate to include both actual costs and an estimate going forward for 10 years. The reason is to capture the whole cost of the scheme, from its early days of design and start-up costs—again, about which we have received absolutely no information—through to initial implementation in, say, three years' time, and beyond, to the ongoing operation of the scheme and its transformation into a compulsory scheme. The Minister's figure of £584 million is only a small slice of the overall picture—it is the big picture that we are trying to see.
3.15 pm
Subsection (5) simply asks for the cost estimates to be presented in the format of financial years and subsection (6) makes it clear that the cost estimate covers not only the Home Office but the whole of government.
Noble Lords who have not followed our debates in Committee may be surprised to find that we need to spell this out. The sad fact is that the Minister's brief has confined her to giving information about the Home Office's costs alone, and not even all of those, because the Minister has said that the £584 million does not even include the figures for its own immigration service.
We are clear that we need to see figures for the whole of government, because the benefits that the Government have outlined occur across the whole of government. If Parliament is to get a proper look at
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costs and benefits, we must make sure that it compares apples and oranges—that is, the costs must match the benefits.
Lastly, subsection (7) requires the cost estimate to be reviewed by the Comptroller and Auditor General. I am sure that that assurance will need no explanation.
We are not seeking today to find out any more information about costs. In early December, before completion of the Committee stage, my noble friend Lady Anelay of St Johns wrote to the Minister offering to place the Committee into a secret session, under Standing Order 15 of your Lordships' House. We could then have discussed the costs in detail without any commercial confidentiality complications. The Government declined. Now that we have reached Report, it is too late for detailed analysis, so I will not today weary the House with the detailed questions that we felt should have been answered.
Let me just put the costs in context. The Government say that the annual running costs are £584 million. That is for one year, starting in late 2008. The London School of Economics report, which came out last June, put the figures over a 10-year period in a range of £10.6 billion to £19.2 billion. If the Home Office's annual figure of £584 million is representative of costs over 10 years—which is a very big if—we get a total of £5.8 billion. The Government say that the fee for a passport will be £93 and that for an identity card £30. They imply that the fees are driven from the £584 million cost estimate.
If the LSE report is right, the fee for a passport could actually be between £170 and over £300, and an ID card fee could rise to over £100. The Government have refused to cap fees, so the implication is that if costs rise, so too will fees. There is plenty of research to show that the acceptability of the ID card scheme declines as its cost increases.
The Home Office has produced some analysis in an attempted rebuttal of the LSE's figures, but the lines of attack have been about a few specific assumptions. There has not been an open and detailed debate between the Home Office and the LSE team. I know that the LSE team regrets this.
Since last summer the LSE team has found some areas where it overestimated costs, but also some areas where it underestimated costs. In the latest report, released over the weekend, it stands by its original estimates in aggregate.
I am sure that the noble Lords will join me in being impressed that Sir Howard Davies, the director of the LSE, has been unswerving in his support of the research team, in the face of some immoderate reactions from the Government.
The ID scheme is surrounded by much secrecy. We know that the scheme will require large and complex IT systems.
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