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Identity Cards

That is, indeed, a simple answer. We have paid for the infrastructure and technology to ensure that that happens, but I am not sure that my hon. Friend's solution deals with those who do not want to travel and therefore do not apply for a passport. I do not know what the figures are—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea would give them to us if he were here. However, there are simpler methods of dealing with the matter. My second point is about cost. I was present when the former Home Secretary challenged the Opposition spokesman about cost, but I am not sure what the cost is. We have been given the figure of £4,785 million and told that cards for foreign nationals would cost £326 million, but perhaps the Minister can confirm those figures when he replies to this debate. I have also heard anecdotally that one of the reasons why the scheme cannot be scrapped is that the contracts have been signed. With the contracts signed, it is not possible to renege on them, because the Government are bound by them. [Interruption.] I welcome back the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), the Minister for identity, even if briefly for today. If those contracts are signed, what would be the cost of cancelling them? Would it be more than the cost of doing what the hon. Member for Eastleigh has suggested it would be better to do, which for policing would mean putting the money into front-line services? As we all know, budgets are not overflowing with money. There will be a debate over the next 12 months about the possibility of police forces throughout the country wanting to cut the number of front-line officers because—they claim—of the money that the Government have given them over the past year and a bit. We need to know a figure for the total cost and it is extremely important that we have it as quickly as possible. The House will know that the Home Secretary has agreed to give evidence to our Committee next week. A large portion of our questioning will focus on ID cards, because we are concerned to know precisely where the Government stand. We will want to know facts and figures from the Government, particularly how much the scheme will cost and how much it would cost if the Government decided not to proceed with it. We have heard in interventions by Opposition Members that the Opposition have written to the suppliers and made it clear that, should the Conservative party win the next election, it will not proceed with the ID card scheme. I am not sure whether, should the Opposition win a general election, they would be in a position to cancel a contract that the Government had signed. If such a contract were binding on this Government, I assume that it would be binding on a future Government too. If that is the case, we have a right to know whether what the Opposition have said will make any difference. My penultimate point concerns the security of the database. We have had assurances from this Home Secretary, as well as from the previous Home Secretary and others, that the database is secure. I will not make the point that other hon. Members have made about the security of databases at the moment—I know that the Minister for identity also has responsibility for databases—but the fact remains that we have a security problem. It is a good job that we have not had many losses this year compared with the end of last year, but once we have the information proposed, we will have the mother of all databases. Therefore, we will need to be absolutely secure in the knowledge that that information will not leak out or be lost or sent anywhere in error. I am sure that the Government will try to reassure us on that point. My final point is about the third category on the Home Office website, which says that ID cards will""tackle illegal working and immigration abuse"." It is therefore good that the Minister for Borders and Immigration is answering this debate. That problem will not be solved by ID cards. The Mayor of London estimates from reports that he has commissioned that the number of illegal immigrants in London alone is probably 861,000. The Minister has been very honest, fair and open with our Committee: he has never put a figure on the amount, because he once did that about another matter and we kept hounding him over it. Very cleverly, therefore, he will not give us a figure this time, but the fact is that there are a lot of illegal immigrants. I do not believe that they will go to Manchester or Newcastle, now that the scheme is being extended there, and apply for a voluntary identity card. Unless we secure our borders, we will get a lot of illegal people in this country. At the moment—subject to any announcement that the Minister responsible for immigration has made in Calais today about securing our borders even further; I know that that is one of the great templates of his mission—those people are already in the country, whether they are in the bogus colleges that we have heard about in our inquiries, coming in on the backs of lorries, or whatever. There are probably hundreds of thousands of illegal people already in the country, and I do not think that the scheme will deal with that problem. I am still with the Government on this issue, but less enthusiastically so than I was 12 months ago. They will need to keep making their arguments very clearly on this point, and they will need to put facts and figures before the House if they are going to convince me and other right hon. and hon. Members to continue to support them in the Division Lobby on this and future occasions.