---

Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, of course, we already have the benefit of the Public Accounts Committee; we have all the ways in which the Government are currently brought to account on costs. We do not see anything that entitles this piece of legislation to be taken outside that which would normally apply. Therefore, we believe that the currently available scrutiny will suffice in these circumstances. We believe that many of the net benefits, as I have indicated, are included in the gateway review. Noble Lords have seen the basis of that. The identity cards programme is subject to that regular review under the Office of Government Commerce gateway review process. The review teams have full access to the business case for the identity cards programme. The noble Earl, Lord Northesk, asks me to say more about that. I can announce that, just last week, a further gateway review of the identity cards programme was completed and I am pleased to say that the review team concluded that the programme is in a fit state to proceed. The review team had full access to the business case, both for the setting up and for issuing identity cards and for anticipated uses of the scheme in both public and private sectors. Noble Lords will be familiar with the fact that the reason that the gateway process was adopted was to ensure that the Government better understood the risks involved and were better able to manage the process so that they did not fall into the error that used to happen when that scrutiny and that rigour was not in place. Therefore, we feel that this is a robust way of dealing with it.