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Identity Cards Bill

In a second. The effect of moving to a biometric passport is to raise the cost of the passport to of the order of £65 on each occasion. Members in all parts of the House must acknowledge that that can be avoided only if the United Kingdom were to choose to stand aside from the international biometric development that I have described, which would, in turn, lead to costs for those of our citizens who wish to travel in any given way. So that £65 is a cost that we meet without any reference to the Identity Cards Bill now before the House. That is an important and critical point. On top of that biometric passport cost, the biometric ID card would cost an additional £25 to £30. That is the unit cost published in the regulatory impact assessment. It is not the charge that the Government agreed—