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Identity Cards

I will come on to that in a second, but the right hon. Gentleman cannot suggest that identity cards would not make a contribution to tackling identity fraud, benefit fraud, money laundering, people-trafficking, or a whole range of other problems. Incidentally, they would make a contribution towards tackling terrorism; as I have said, identity cards are a tool, not the toolbox. The hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell—my new friend as a supporter of ID cards, I discover—says that he has never spoken to anyone in the security services who says that ID cards would make any difference. In the five weeks that I have been in this job, I have not spoken to anyone in the security services who says anything other than that they would make a valuable contribution. I set out the three principal arguments against identity cards: they are not necessary, they will cost too much, and they will interfere with civil liberties. I shall now take each of those in turn. Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will, I am sure, recognise that people traffickers, drug dealers and, indeed, terrorists depend on ready access to bogus documents. At present, there is no single effective way of recording or establishing someone's identity. That makes people more vulnerable to identity fraud, makes the job of the police and others in tracking suspects more difficult, and makes proving one's own identity, or verifying someone else's identity, a laborious and complex process. It puts us in stark contrast to other European countries, most of which have a central and secure way of registering and tracking people's identity. There are numerous databases that hold personal details of people living in this country, but none of them exists purely to verify someone's identity. Personal information on anyone who holds a driving licence is held on the DVLA database. The NHS holds personal details of everyone who is registered with a general practitioner and allocates them a unique NHS number, which apparently used to be their identity card number before identity cards were scrapped in 1952.