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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 21:"Page 2, line 4, at end insert—" ““(4A)   For the purposes of subsection (4), the provision of a public service or services will be made more efficient and effective if, and only if, the Secretary of State can demonstrate, and certify in a report laid before Parliament, that, for the relevant service or services, the total cost to public funds and the total additional cost to users of the relevant service, which together will result from the establishment, maintenance and application of the identity card scheme to the service or services concerned, will be significantly less than the saving to public funds that the Secretary of State certifies will result from the establishment, maintenance and application of the identity card scheme to the relevant service or services. (4B)   In calculating the costs and savings in subsection (4A), the Secretary of State must include costs to public funds and service users that would not arise, or would not have arisen, if a document were not designated under section 4 of this Act.”” The noble Baroness said: When I introduced our first amendment yesterday, I did not anticipate that it would lead to such an early furore on the issue of this scheme’s cost. Noble Lords from both sides of the House soon seized upon the importance of that. Amendment No. 21 remains on the list only so that I can indicate publicly the kind of questions I hope the Government might be able to address more effectively by the time we get to Report. It is, therefore, very firmly in the nature of a probing amendment. It is important that the Government should be able to demonstrate clearly that the cost of the establishment and maintenance of the identity register and the ID card system are proportionate to the alleged benefits to be realised by the better control and detection of fraud in the public services, and the better delivery of those services to all. The Minister referred to the KPMG report, a concise version of which has been placed in the Library. She will have realised yesterday that we feel it would be appropriate if, before we reach this full debate on Report, further information could be made available, so that a proper assessment of the Government’s position may be made. There was a certain amount of disarray on the Government Front Bench yesterday about the real figures for costs. I do not attach any blame for that disarray to the Minister. I attach it firmly to the Cabinet that has, as yet, not properly worked out the cost of the scheme or has done so and not seen fit to let those costs be known. I make no judgement on that; I simply wish to take part, in Committee, in a further examination of what the real costs are. Last week, I chaired an all-party meeting at which the two speakers were Mr Simon Davis, referred to earlier today by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, and the Minister who has responsibility for the Bill in another place, Mr Andy Burnham. I understand that that was one of a series of hustings that they have attended. I was grateful to both of them for so clearly putting forward their relative cases to an audience of predominantly information technology experts. There were also several Peers there, representing both sides of the House. What concerned me most during the course of that presentation was the feeling that Mr Davis was beginning to move closer to what he thought the Home Office figures were, only to find that Mr Burnham, during the course of questioning, volunteered the plea that we should not take into account the integration costs because these would not fall upon the Home Office budget. That left the meeting somewhat open-mouthed; we need to look not only at the impact upon the Home Office budget when determining proportionality and cost-benefit analysis but also at the impact upon the budget of all departments, because that may have an impact on tax paid by individuals. Therefore, if a proportionate benefit is not achieved—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was rightly interested to ensure that that benefit is taken into account—or if benefits outweigh the costs, one could say, ““It’s all fine and dandy to say that £30 will be the cost of an ID card if you don’t have a passport and £93 will be the cost with a passport””—if those are the correct figures. However, that would be no use to individuals if the real costs of provision of the whole system were somehow loaded on to other departments and had to be borne by the taxpayer in other ways. That is a problem at the moment. I will certainly not go into the kind of detail I had intended because that would merely repeat some of the snippets of yesterday’s debate. However, it is important that the Government carefully take into account points made yesterday from all parts of the Committee.