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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness has enthusiastically told us of some of the benefits, and I shall not argue about that. We are talking about whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs of the Bill. Parliament should know roughly what the cost will be before it accepts the scheme at all. I do not know whether the noble Baroness was in local government, but when one is in local government, before one puts something out to tender, one decides whether the project is worth having. One asks for the broad costs, capital costs and revenue costs and one then decides whether it is worth doing. One certainly does not decide without knowing the total costs. In her extremely helpful letters to my noble friend about costs, the Minister answered a great many questions; but throughout she has said that because of commercial sensitivity it is not possible to tell Parliament broadly what the costs will be. She has said that to the London School of Economics and thus limited that body in what it can tell us. All the amendment is doing is to say that before the Bill is implemented and the scheme begins, Parliament—and the Commons in particular, because it is the guardian of the budget—should know broadly what the cost is. Quite honestly, even to me, who comes from local government, it is rubbish to say that you cannot put something out to tender without first knowing broadly what the cost will be; of course you know that. If Parliament finds it impossible to discuss big sums in public for those reasons, perhaps there is an argument for a secret session—but I do not know about that because I do not know what the constitutional position would be. The matter is quite simple. The amendment, whether or not its wording is correct, says that the House of Commons should know the total cost before it decides to put the scheme forward. I cannot see that there is an argument against that, whether or not one wants identity cards. So I hope that the whole House will support the amendment.