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Identity Cards

The economics of that argument are ridiculous. The same could be said of the passport service. If, goodness forbid, the hon. Gentleman were ever in a position of having to take a decision and he were asked what he thought the passport fee for the next year should be, and his officials provided him with a brief saying, "We don't know how many are going to be sold next year, Minister, so we can't set a fee", what would he do? He would say, "We will base it on cost recovery. We will look at the previous average cost of passports and the marginal cost of production", just as any business person has to do, and he will set his fee. [Interruption.] The fee will be £30 next year and £30 the year after; we have said that. This is not difficult economics. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) says "Do the maths", but he clearly does not know what marginal cost is. The second myth that has been perpetuated in the debate is that because there are six good reasons for an identity scheme, no one reason is good enough. It is argued that an identity card system in Madrid did not stop the terrorist bombing. On that logic, the police force in Spain could be abolished. They had a police force, but that did not stop the bombing. The Government have not said, as the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell) claimed, that it was the key element—[Interruption.] The Opposition might not like the argument, but the right hon. Gentleman said that we had claimed that ID cards were the key method against terrorism. That is not what we said.