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e-Government

: I wish I were, but the information commissioner is worried. In his detailed submissions on the Identity Cards Bill, he pointed out that it was not necessary to identify people in order to maintain that register at national level. We should at least be on our guard. As I said at the beginning, I did not argue against ever holding such data at Government level. It should be ensured, however, that rules on data protection, freedom of information and access to people's records are in place. If there is no need for a national identity register database such as has been proposed, I would warn against it. It is right to encourage e-procurement. The Gershon report anticipated local government year-on-year savings of something like 2.5 per cent. over the next few years. We must be cautious in expecting those savings all to be delivered exactly as planned. Cheltenham borough council found the implementation of e-procurement a little clumsy. There was a slightly simplistic expectation of predictable savings in exchange for new technology investment grants. Councillors were also concerned that the pattern of procurement might shift from smaller local suppliers to larger companies that were better able to exploit the e-procurement system. The Government's Authority Forum backed that up by saying:"““There could be other unforeseen problems with making changes to back office processes such as procurement systems.””" Martin Scarfe, who represents one of the councils that participates in the Authority Forum, said:"““I could take 2.5 per cent. off the budget tomorrow by insisting on e-procurement, but what would happen? I would take £10 million out of the local economy, because small and medium-sized businesses here are not geared up to it. Sometimes councils have to make local choices.””" The warning is reinforced by the Federation of Small Businesses. I found what it said slightly surprising and alarming. It stated that"““More than four out of five small businesses use the Internet””" —so one in five does not—"““and this use is mainly for email purposes. We believe that form-filling etc should be easier with the advent of e-government.””" It continued:"““The Gershon report recommended moving local authority procurement online by the end of 2005. This could have a serious impact on SMEs, who trade with government already but do not have online facilities, or who wish to trade with government, but again, do not have the appropriate online facilities. SMEs who currently trade with government without online facilities will almost certainly lose work.””" That is not a challenge to abandon e-procurement but a challenge to pay special attention to smaller businesses' needs and to support them in adapting to an inevitable new era. There is an example in my constituency. I recently went into a small bookshop that was closing down. My assumption was that the huge new Ottakar's around the corner or the huge Waterstone's in the town centre had taken all its business. I was wrong—it was Amazon. If that bookshop had been more geared up online and had marketed itself locally for online book purchases, it might have survived. Some critical thought must be applied to information and communications technology. E-democracy is another exciting, modern idea. Piloted in 2002, it clearly has some benefits. The ““UK online annual report 2002””, commenting on the e-voting pilot in St. Albans, states:"““As a result of piloting e-voting and counting, the election result in St Albans was announced just four minutes after the polls closed.””" That would not produce quite the same atmosphere on election nights as we are all used to, but we would get to bed a little earlier—or our parties would start a little earlier, depending on the result. The Electoral Commission concluded that there was no evidence that fears of fraud were realised in practice. However, I should be interested to know how they knew that. Having anonymous people voting online seems to be open to great risks. Some of the experience of technical glitches in the US voting machines, some of which are not just electric and mechanical but electronic, should give us pause. Sometimes it is better to look for simpler solutions. If the Government want to boost turnout in elections, they might experiment with voting at weekends, which might boost turnout without the possible threat to public trust in election systems that e-technology might introduce. If I am beginning to sound conservative, it is partly from my experience of IT systems. I was once assured by an academic that the trend in database technology was for cost to go constantly down and capacity to go constantly up, and that I should just wait, as it would inevitably mean that I would be able to get a system of infinite capacity at zero cost. My experience is rather the opposite: almost every IT project that I have looked at has had at least a tendency to go up in both cost and time scale. I am sure that the Minister will agree with that. As one hon. Member warned, the complexity of systems and of government means that some of the savings that we anticipate may not be delivered in practice. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) said that the Government were expecting more than £1 billion of savings from e-Government by 2008, but it would be wise not to start spending that money too soon. There is great potential in e-Government. It has the potential to extend consultation and to empower people. I have an example from the voluntary sector, which has been mentioned. I used to work for the Alzheimer's Society, which changed its research programme in an effort to make it less dominated by scientists and medics and more directly influenced by carers and people with dementia. One of the systems that was adopted was for researchers to place their research proposals on an intranet, and carers and people with dementia logged on, reviewed them and posted their comments. It was on the basis of those comments that the society looked to award grants. The researchers said that that was a far more scary process than being reviewed by their medical and scientific peers, because they had to ensure that the language that they used was accessible and understandable. It resulted in a change in the nature of the research programme because it directed research more towards the priorities of carers and people with dementia, not what was most exciting from an intellectual point of view for the medical and scientific people. So there is a real potential to empower people, but there is, as we have already explored, the potential for a digital divide and for people to be excluded. We must be careful, especially where consultation is a tool for important decision-making, that IT does not exclude people, particularly those in the lower social income groups. Productivity may increase, and there are many welcome projects under way that we support, such as the Government gateway and the legal online information database, which help productivity in Government. However, productivity does not always deliver savings; it sometimes just generates more work. As we all know from our e-mail systems, the much-vaunted day of the paperless office—which would mean that we all had lots of free time and much less communication to handle because we did it so efficiently—has not arrived. In practice, it just means that we have 198 e-mails every morning. E-Government and information communications technology may deliver greater productivity, more empowerment, more knowledge and a better citizen, or customer, level of satisfaction. It may deliver great cost savings. However, it demands vigilance to ensure that in the process, we do not exclude a new technological minority, or allow Government to acquire power at the expense of the individual to an extent undreamt of in previous eras.