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Identity Cards Bill

This simple amendment provides that an identity card issued to an individual must be free of charge. Ministers will not be surprised by the amendment, because we have already debated the point in Committee and will no doubt talk further about it tonight. The cost of the card is one of the most crucial elements of our debate. If we believe that the card is right and will, in due course, have to be possessed, if not carried, by everybody in the country, how on earth can we make the sort of charges for it that we have heard about in the past few months? The identity card will come in a package with the passport. I shall come to the combined cost of the card and passport in a moment, but we have heard already that some 20 per cent. of the population never need to have a passport. How much does the Minister propose to charge those who do not want passports, only cards? It is the nation’s job to support its citizens’ travel abroad, but why should a fee be charged for ID cards? The possible costs cited vary. ““The Identity Project”” states:"““The Government originally asserted that the cost of the passport/ID card package, that is valid for 10 years, would be £85, but six months later this increased to £93.””" In Committee, the Minister was chary of allocating a cost to the card. He skirted around questions about how much the card alone would be and whether it would be possible to issue a card without a passport. He gave us the tantalising figure for the cost of the passport of some £63. By a simple process of subtraction, the card would therefore cost about £30, but the Minister was hesitant about agreeing to that sum. However, now we hear from the Government that the figure is about right. I would be grateful if the Minister explained why he was so reluctant to talk about the cost of the card alone. The costs of the card alone will not be confined to compiling the register and then issuing the cards, with all the associated equipment necessary. Some reference has already been made to the article in The Scotsman, which claims that ID cards will lead to massive fraud. It states:"““Jerry Fishenden, the national technology officer for Microsoft, says the proposal to place ‘biometrics’—or personal identifiers such as fingerprints—on a central database could perpetuate the ‘very problem the system was intended to prevent’. He says Ministers ‘should not be building systems that allow hackers to mine information so easily’.””" As we asked about an earlier amendment, if rubbish is put in, what rubbish will come out? If the scheme will be wide open to fraud, as the article suggests, how will we offset the costs? Will a margin be included in the charge for ID cards and passports?