Michael Martin (Speaker)

I have selected the amendment in the names of Lynne Jones and her colleagues.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I remind hon. Members that this Bill is based on the Bill that was read a Second time on 21 December 2004 and approved by this House on 10 February 2005, that the public debate started under my predecessor in 2002 and that the draft Bill was subject to six months' public consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny by the Home Affairs Committee in 2004. The Bill has been well debated.

The Bill is enabling legislation to provide the statutory authority for a national identity cards system to be introduced to cover the whole of the United Kingdom, together with the national identity register to record information on holders of ID cards. It also gives legislative authority for expenditure on setting up the ID cards scheme and for charging fees.

In brief, the Bill establishes the national identity register; provides powers to issue biometric ID cards either linked to existing designated documents or as stand-alone ID cards; ensures that checks can be made against databases to confirm an applicant's identity and guard against fraud; sets out what information will be held—including biometrics—and what safeguards will be put in place; enables public and private sector organisations to verify a person's identity, with their consent; includes enabling powers, so that, in future, access to specified public services could be linked to the production of a valid card; provides a power for it to become compulsory at a future date to register and to be issued with a card, which includes civil penalties against failure to register; creates a national identity scheme commissioner to have oversight of the whole scheme; and creates new criminal offences on the possession of false ID cards.

There has been general support for ID cards, but many serious, practical concerns have been expressed on both sides of the House, and I intend to address five of those concerns on Second Reading. First, I shall address the range of concerns around the Big Brother society—it has been described in other ways. Secondly, I shall address issues of cost, which are a serious concern for many hon. Members on both sides of the House. Thirdly, I shall set out the benefits of the scheme for both individuals and society. Fourthly, I shall address the concerns about the project's size, technology and scale. Fifthly, I shall deal with safeguards and legal processes. I shall give way at various points in my speech in line with that structure.

William Cash (Stone, Conservative)

Does the Home Secretary agree with the Information Commissioner's remarks that the

"data trail of identity checks on individuals risk an unnecessary and disproportionate intrusion into individuals' privacy"?

Such identity checks are in fact and in law an intrusion into people's human rights. How can he sign off the Bill as being compatible with the European convention on human rights?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I do not agree with the Information Commissioner, and I shall begin my remarks by explaining exactly why.

We live in a society where information is held about all of us—everyone in this House and everyone in this country—on a scale unfamiliar to our predecessors even as recently as 10 years ago. A vast range of information exists in our society today, including information on the internet that one can access simply by typing in a name, financial and bank details, health and medical information, police and law enforcement-related material, travel-related documentation and information about a person's telephone communications, driving licence, national insurance and tax. That range of information cannot be uninvented, nor can the globalised world in which crime is international but impacts on every community. Those are the realities with which we have to live.

We must address only two questions in considering how we deal with this so-called Big Brother society. First, in relation to each category of information that I have just set out, what protections currently exist for authorities to access data, for the right to see data, and for the right to use a service, whether it is a cash machine or a passport? In each of those areas there is a specific legal framework that regulates the information that exists about all of us. The first point that I want to make very strongly indeed is that nothing in the Bill changes any of those protections for any of those categories of data. There are issues about each of those categories of data that people can legitimately discuss and consider, but this Bill is not about those questions.

The second question is, can we verify that the information that exists about an individual is indeed about that individual? That is where identity cards come in and where the Bill is relevant. We need to protect our society in this globalised world, for the simple reason that, in many cases, identity can be stolen, whether it is a fraudster getting money from a bank account, a people trafficker providing false documents for a trafficked person, or a smuggler pretending to be their own father to deal with data. Such identity can be stolen. In other cases, complicated processes are now needed to check identity because it is not secure—there are examples as simple as opening a bank account, getting a pass from the Criminal Records Bureau or getting a passport or driving licence.

Michael Weir (Spokesperson (Environment & Food; Health; Rural Affairs; Trade & Industry); Angus, Scottish National Party)

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give way shortly.

I argue that the identity card has real benefits to the individual and society, and that it is a means of limiting abuse in our modern information society rather than a means of adding to it and creating it in a more complex way. It gives individuals the right to secure verification of their identity.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall come to some particulars, but before I do so I shall take a couple of interventions.

Nick Gibb (Shadow Minister, Education; Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Conservative)

Given that the identity card database will have details of everyone's fingerprints and other biometric information, what assurances can the Secretary of State give that that database will not be used routinely by the police in their normal investigation processes so that, for example, a fingerprint left on a pen in a bank will not lead to innocent people being questioned and having to explain their whereabouts on the day that that bank was robbed?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I can give the assurance that the law of the land requires that the police can operate only in accordance with the legal powers that they have at the moment. That is a very important requirement. It is right that police and security services should have powers as regards national security or serious and organised crime—whatever the issue might be. The House has agreed that it is right that they should have powers in those circumstances so that we can protect ourselves, but—I emphasise the point that I made earlier—those rights are already set out in existing law and are not changed by this legislation.

Andrew Love (Edmonton, Labour)

My understanding is that up to 51 separate categories of information will be required for the register. That seems excessive to many people. Can my right hon. Friend justify the inclusion of so many pieces of information?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

As my hon. Friend knows, the list is set out in the schedule to the Bill. I am happy, in Committee or elsewhere, to go through each of those categories and consider whether particular aspects are indeed necessary. That is a perfectly reasonable issue to address, but we need to be clear that the basic data on the database are about the identity of the citizen, including basic material about that person, and that is what the list of categories is about. I concede that, if there are areas where we could have less information, I will consider that in Committee.

Elfyn Llwyd (Parliamentary Leader; Meirionnydd Nant Conwy, Plaid Cymru)

The Home Secretary has referred twice to national security and the protection of society, which appear in the Bill. If it is passed today, the system will not be on stream for 10 years. What on earth will become of us in those 10 years?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

We fight all the time on all the issues that we have to tackle, including serious and organised crime and national security, to do our best to deal with the threats that our society faces. I observed that we live in an internationalised, globalised world. In all the matters for which I am responsible—serious and organised crime, immigration and asylum and counter-terrorism—we need to work internationally. We should improve our capacity to do that and that is part of the purpose of the Bill. However, it is not its whole purpose.

Andrew Mitchell (Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, International Development; Sutton Coldfield, Conservative)

Will the Home Secretary give hon. Members two pieces of information? First, what, according to his experts, is the likely number of identity checks in any day or week? Secondly, what is the highest percentage accuracy that he can expect of the scheme?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall deal with the second question later. The number of checks depends entirely on the extent to which and the purposes for which individuals use the identity card. If the question is about police identity checks, the number will be about the same as it is now. The police check identity in their work now.

Jim Cunningham (Coventry South, Labour)

Will my right hon. Friend confirm now or later that he would have to return to the House with further legislation to make the scheme compulsory?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

A further measure would have to be introduced in both the House and the other place. An affirmative resolution would need to be passed in both Houses.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall make some progress and then give way.

In the information society in which we live, identity cards will be a means of helping to control it rather than adding to it. I want to give full particulars, dealing with personal protection, access to private companies, the role of the police and the position of ethnic minorities. All those points have been raised with me.

I shall deal first with personal protection. I want to make it explicitly clear that, under the Data Protection Act 1998, everyone has the right, without qualification, to check the record that is held on them. Moreover, the same right to check who has accessed the database that currently exists in data protection legislation will apply to the identity database in the Bill. I know that many of my hon. Friends in particular have been worried about those aspects. I therefore take the opportunity not only to set that out clearly and openly but to state that, in Committee, I am prepared to consider amendments that might make it more explicit.

I acknowledge that people have concerns because the matter involves the Data Protection Act and they are worried about what might be perceived as a potentially secretive database. I am keen to draw that out.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway, Labour)

One cannot obtain data under the Data Protection Act if the information refers to security or criminal matters. Under the Bill, the Home Secretary has the power to include, through secondary legislation, issues that relate to security and criminal matters. By definition, they would not be accessible under the Data Protection Act, yet they are the most important matters. Will the Home Secretary give his mind to that and let us know the answer?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall, but I want to reassert the point that I made a second ago. Protections under the Bill for the database for which it provides are the same as those for other databases under the Data Protection Act. As my hon. and learned Friend says, the Bill has implications for the way in which the police and security services operate, as does the Data Protection Act. However, there is no division between our proposals for the Bill and existing provisions under data protection legislation.

Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central, Labour)

If someone examines the data held on them and finds that they are inaccurate, what procedures exist for a fast-track tribunal system to correct that? Nothing can be more damaging for an individual than finding that there is information on the databases that can destroy one's credit rating, business and one's life. Will the Home Secretary ensure that the Government table amendments in Committee to establish a quick tribunal system to correct incorrect information?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I can certainly give my hon. Friend the assurance that he seeks. The obligation to make the information correct—to which his central point relates—is accepted, and we can include in the Bill a procedure to ensure that that is clear. I do not think that a tribunal case would be involved, because there is no interest whatsoever in putting inaccurate data on the database. If he feels that some aspects require an appellate structure, I will give thought to that, but it is in no one's interest for wrong data to be on the database. If a mistake of some kind is made—which can of course happen, as he implied—it is important to correct it, in the interests of everyone including, as he suggested, the individual, but also the system.

Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire, Conservative)

Given that, even for the Home Secretary, this is the beginning of a new Parliament, and given all his undertakings to provide for detailed consideration in Committee, why is the Committee timetable so congested? It requires the Bill to be out of Committee three weeks from today. Why can he not further consider my suggestion on the last Second Reading that the Bill—complex as it is, and affecting every man, woman and child in the country—should be referred to a Joint Select Committee of the Lords and the Commons for the most critical and detailed scrutiny?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I welcome the hon. Gentleman's maiden intervention, if that is the right way to describe it.

I understand, although I am open to correction, that the Committee timetable was agreed through the usual channels. If that is not the case, we can certainly discuss it again. As I said earlier, there has been substantial debate on these matters in both Houses over a considerable period. That includes pre-legislative scrutiny going back to 2002. I believe that the procedures now being followed are correct.

Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Harborough, Conservative)

Yes. May I return the Home Secretary to the Data Protection Act? The Government propose that the citizen will have to pay a large fee for the identity card. If the regime laid down by the Act is followed, he will have to pay another fee to gain access to the register to see whether the information about him is correct. Will the Home Secretary assure us that he will not charge a fee to people using the system for that purpose?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give assurances on charging in a moment.

Various questions have been asked about whether private companies would be able to buy information from the national database. Let me make the position clear. There will be no open access to information on the register. Private companies will not be able to gain access to or buy national identity register entries. With the consent of the identity card holder—I emphasise that—banks or other approved businesses will be able to verify identity by checking an ID card against the national identity register. That would mainly involve confirming that the card is valid and has not been reported lost or stolen, and that the information shown on it is correct.

The card holder's biometric details may also—with the card holder's consent—be confirmed against those held on the register. Clause 14, however, specifically prevents fingerprints or other biometric information from being conveyed from the register to a private sector organisation, even with the consent of the individual concerned. It also does not allow administrative information not related to confirmation of identity to be given to a private sector organisation—again, even with the card holder's consent.

Michael Weir (Spokesperson (Environment & Food; Health; Rural Affairs; Trade & Industry); Angus, Scottish National Party)

I am concerned about that point. We have heard that private sector companies will have access to the database to check information. If the identity card is a gold-plated proof of identity, why should those companies need access to the database behind it?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I am sorry if I was not clear enough, but I just said as clearly as I could that private sector companies would not have access to the database. I also said that, with the consent of the card holder, banks or other approved businesses would be able to verify identity. That is all they would be able to do. It is not the same thing.

John Redwood (Shadow Secretary of State for Deregulation, Deregulation; Wokingham, Conservative)

Clause 15 says that the Government can demand the production of an ID card for purposes connected with the provision of a public service. Which public services have the Government in mind, and how many abuses does the Home Secretary think are currently taking place because of false identities?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

The Bill states clearly that the ID card cannot be used as the sole means of verification of identity for the provision of any public service. It sets out a procedure whereby a public service provider—a local authority, a library, or whatever—can join the system if it wishes to do so, as it has the right to do. Linked to the point that I have just made, that can be done only with the consent of the individual identity card holder. I think that that is a perfectly reasonable system to operate.

Concerns about police powers have been widely expressed, particularly in regard to stop and search. I want to make it clear that the Bill, and the introduction of identity cards, will make no difference to the general powers of the police to stop people for no reason and demand proof of identity. The Bill will make no difference to the powers that exist under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. In fact, quicker, reliable access to confirmed identification would help to reduce the time a suspected person might spend in police custody. The effect of that would be to reduce the number of people wrongly held in police custody while their identity was being checked, which would be of benefit to the individual and to the police.

I also want to confirm that there is no requirement to carry an identity card at all times, as there have been many questions about that. In regard to the power to make regulations to require an ID card to be produced to access public services, clause 15(3) specifically prohibits any

"regulations the effect of which would be to require an individual—

. . . to carry an ID with him at all times".

I also want to address the concerns expressed by ethnic minorities. A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain has been reported as urging the Home Office to reassure Muslims that they would not be singled out, saying that the key point would be whether the community would be "unfairly targeted". It will not be, and I can give that assurance quite specifically, for the reason that I have just given. Similarly, a spokesman for the Commission for Racial Equality asked whether there were

"adequate safeguards in place to address the potential adverse impact on particular groups in our society".

Again, I can give that assurance. The race equality impact assessment, which was published with the Bill, sets out quite clearly how this situation will be addressed. The fact is that ethnic minority communities, like other communities, have no reason to fear the ID card system, and still less reason to fear that they will be targeted in any way.

David Winnick (Walsall North, Labour)

If we should not be at all concerned about these proposals, following all the reassurances that my right hon. Friend is giving, why would the Information Commissioner say that the ID card would be an "unnecessary and disproportionate intrusion" into our liberty? Should not we take Mr. Thomas's comments very seriously indeed? Is it not also a fact that, if we had a free vote on the Bill tonight, it would certainly be thrown out?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

First, I cannot speak for the Information Commissioner. I do not think that he is right. He is a long-standing opponent of the identity card system. I think that his analysis is incorrect, for the reasons that I have already set out. An identity card will provide a means of dealing with the information that society issues that would not exist if we did not have those powers. On the question of a free vote, I simply observe that, when we voted on the Bill's Second Reading on 21 December 2004, the Opposition all voted in favour of it. Now, like sheep, they have moved in the other direction—[Interruption.] We have some good dissension going on here.

Boris Johnson (Henley, Conservative)

The Home Secretary obviously intends to make these things compulsory, and he has already talked about the penalties for refusing to register. Will he now let the British people know exactly what penalties they might face, in fines or imprisonment, for refusing to have anything to do with the scheme?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall cover the cost aspect in a second. Were there to be compulsion—that is, after a vote had been taken in this House and in another place, some considerable time down the line—the penalties for non-registration are set out in the legislation.

Mark Pritchard (Wrekin, The, Conservative)

Will the Secretary of State tell the House how he believes ID cards protected the people of New York on 11 September 2001? The Government talk about national security, but ID cards clearly did not help in those circumstances, or subsequently in Madrid.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will come to that matter in a second.

Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington, Labour)

On the impact of ID cards—which must necessarily become compulsory in due course—on black and minority ethnic communities, the whole House accepts that the Bill does not extend the powers of the police. But it does extend the pretexts on which the police might stop people. All of us who live and work in our inner cities know what that could mean. The Home Secretary should take seriously the concerns of the Commission for Racial Equality and the Muslim Council of Britain, because the last thing that we need is legislation that will further turn the screw on community relations in our big towns.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I do take seriously the concerns of various organisations representing minority ethnic communities, and those of my hon. Friend Ms Abbott, with whom we have also discussed this point in the past. I do not accept her argument that the Bill offers a pretext for police to behave differently from how they do now. The powers are there right now for the police to act in the way that they do. The ID card does not change that regime.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

The Home Secretary has just said that ethnic minorities have nothing to fear from this measure. Why, then, does the Government's own regulatory impact assessment state:

"There are also cultural problems about getting service providers to ask only certain groups for proof of identity for fear of being accused of discrimination"?

Is not that proof that there is a danger for ethnic minorities?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

Not at all. The introduction process that we have discussed links ID cards to the passport, possibly to the driving licence, and possibly to the Criminal Records Bureau. Those are all ways of introducing the card that are not linked to specific ethnic minority groups in any way. What the regulatory impact assessment means is that some people might have concerns about those matters, which is why I have sought to address that specifically in the House.

Nick Palmer (Broxtowe, Labour)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

Not at this stage. I will do so later.

I argue that the ID card system is in fact a bulwark against the surveillance or Big Brother society, and not a further contribution to it. [Interruption.] This is a serious point. People must understand the nature of the society in which we now live. Today, large quantities of information exist for all of us, throughout our society. The question is how we best regulate that and deal with identity fraud.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will make some more progress at this stage.

I turn now to the second concern, which many Members across the House have raised with me: the cost of the scheme and the way in which that operates. I acknowledge that the concerns expressed by Members are genuine.

The starting point for the discussion is the biometric passport. As the House knows, the UK Government propose to introduce biometric passports to keep in line with developments in international standards through the International Civil Aviation Organisation.

Ben Wallace (Lancaster & Wyre, Conservative)

Will the Home Secretary give way?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

Not at this stage.

The first phase of biometric passports, in line with ICAO standards, incorporating a facial image biometric, will be introduced during 2006.

David Howarth (Shadow Minister, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; Cambridge, Liberal Democrat)

Will the Home Secretary give way on that point?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give way to a number of Members when I come to the end of this passage, as I have been doing.

In the case of Europe, facial image and fingerprint biometrics, in line with those standards, will be required in passports issued by EU states under Council Regulation 2252/2004. Facial biometrics must be introduced by August 2006, and fingerprint biometrics three years after the technical specification has been agreed. All EU member states will have to introduce the same biometrics into the EU common format residence permits and visas for nationals of non-EU states.

The United States has issued a further deadline for visa waiver programme countries to introduce facial image biometric passports from 26 October 2006. Biometric passports, or e-passports, incorporate an integrated circuit chip capable of storing the biographic information from the data page, and a digitised photograph or other biometrics. Once all those United States requirements are implemented, nationals of those countries not issuing biometric passports will require a visa to visit the United States. The current cost of a United States non-immigrant biometric visa is £100, requiring a personal visit to London or Belfast and currently taking 31 working days to make an appointment for fingerprints to be recorded, and a further three days to issue a visa.

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak, Labour)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

In a second.

The effect of moving to a biometric passport is to raise the cost of the passport to of the order of £65 on each occasion. Members in all parts of the House must acknowledge that that can be avoided only if the United Kingdom were to choose to stand aside from the international biometric development that I have described, which would, in turn, lead to costs for those of our citizens who wish to travel in any given way. So that £65 is a cost that we meet without any reference to the Identity Cards Bill now before the House. That is an important and critical point.

On top of that biometric passport cost, the biometric ID card would cost an additional £25 to £30. That is the unit cost published in the regulatory impact assessment. It is not the charge that the Government agreed—

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak, Labour)

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I told you that I will give way later—[Hon. Members: "Ooh!"] My hon. Friend is very persistent and very effective in her arguments, if not always in her resolutions. I promise her that I will give way at the appropriate point. I rather liked the "Ooh!" from Members. I must try to acquire that effective tone.

As I have said, the £25 to £30 that I have described is the unit cost published in the regulatory impact assessment, but I emphasise that that is not the charge that the Government have agreed. The actual charge will be determined by the Government at the time of introduction, depending on the business plan for the card's introduction. It will include, first, the cost of producing the card following the tender process; secondly, it will include the income in respect of driving licences or the Criminal Records Bureau, for example, which we could use to deal with the costs associated with the card; thirdly, it will include the possibility of cheaper cards for poorer citizens, which many of my colleagues have argued is a necessary development; fourthly, there is the possibility of a maximum charge for the card, so that it is capped at a particular level.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give way in a moment, but at a time of my choosing.

I intend to provide more detail on the Government's intentions before the Bill leaves this House, but as a result of that clarity, many of the concerns that people have about the cost will lessen. I want to emphasise one other point before I give way. The Bill already makes it clear, in clause 37, that once the legislation is enacted, Parliament has to approve the fees and charges for ID cards. That is done by way of the negative resolution, but I am prepared to consider changes in Committee, such as making the initial charges subject to the affirmative, rather than the negative, procedure, if that will give the House some confidence that the charging regime is being established in accordance with people's wishes.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

Of course, the Government are entirely of the view that it would be ridiculous to have an expensive card that people were in some sense forced to buy. But that is not what we will have. I give way first to my hon. Friend—my admired friend—Lynne Jones.

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak, Labour)

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind remarks and for giving way. What is the status of the proposed EU-wide passport with fingerprint biometrics that he mentioned earlier? Is it just a proposal or a definite agreement? Will he also address the question, raised by the Opposition, of the cost of accessing the data held on an individual, and will he say how long it would take to get that information and to make any changes to it, should the individual in question identify an error?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

On my hon. Friend's second point, I have already made it clear—I hope that she accepts that this really is the case—that individual companies and private-sector organisations simply cannot buy the database. On her first point, as far as the United States is concerned, it will do what it does irrespective of anything else. On the European Union, the regulation to which I referred is binding on the Schengen countries, although not necessarily on us. However, it is expected that all EU member states will have to introduce the same biometrics into the EU common format residence permits, and into visas for nationals of non-EU states.

I should point out to my hon. Friend and to others who are concerned about this issue that in the view of all observers, there is absolutely no doubt that the development of biometric travel documents in the ways that I have described is the future. Given that environment, we would seriously disadvantage the citizens of this country if we did not go down the biometric route.

Ian Paisley (North Antrim, DUP)

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the letter that he sent to our party on this issue, which we have found helpful. But will he confirm to this House that none of the data that we are discussing can be dispensed outside this United Kingdom? The Taoiseach has made it clear that the Irish Government are going to go for this and reference has been made to some form of cross-border arrangement. That would be very serious indeed, when the members of the security forces and others walk with the threat of the IRA on them. They would not need to gather news about threats; they would get it if Government data were available. I would like an assurance on that from the Home Secretary.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I am happy to give that assurance. As I said in a letter to the hon. Gentleman's colleague, the Identity Cards Bill does not allow information to be provided from the national identity register to any foreign Government. That is the position—full stop. That is the state of affairs that applies, so I can give the firm assurance that the hon. Gentleman seeks.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

In that case, can the Home Secretary explain to the House how the common travel arrangements will work without any exchange of data between the two Governments?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I can certainly explain that I have had informal discussions with Ministers of the Irish Government on this matter. The right hon. Gentleman is right that issues need to be discussed to achieve it. [Interruption.] I hear Mr. Hogg shouting, "Why have we not done it already?" from a sedentary position. It is for this House and this country to decide how to proceed with the Bill, but how developments would take place in respect of the joint travel area is a matter not only for us, but for the Irish Government. Rev. Ian Paisley asked for assurances, which I have given him, because it is certainly the case that we would not release data from our databases to the Irish Government. That is the case—pure and simple.

Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)

May I take the Home Secretary to the day on which the scheme becomes compulsory? People from the United States, France and Mongolia will possess passports and related documents that entitle them to be in the UK, whereas my right hon. Friend and I will have identity cards. However, people who commute from Donegal to Derry or Doncaster, or from Dublin or Cork to London each week for working Monday to Friday will not possess and cannot be required to possess the identity card. Justice Minister McDowell may be pursuing biometrics for the European passport, but I am told that there is no way on God's earth that the Irish Republic Parliament will introduce compulsory identity card systems—not now and not in a decade. How, then, will it work?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

My hon. Friend, with all due respect, misunderstands my point. The joint travel area system works now in a variety of different ways to ensure that the data are used in a proper way. The establishment in the UK of an identity card, which is an important element in the whole process, will help that system work even better. Full stop. That is all that needs to be said about it.

Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)

May I press the Home Secretary a little further on the issue of capping the charge? One of the reasons why public support for the principle of identity cards appears to have slipped is that so much misinformation has been put into the public domain over the likely costs. Will my right hon. Friend give us an assurance that the public will not be expected to pay more than £28 or £30 at today's prices when the ID cards are introduced?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I agree with my hon. Friend that some of the fantastic figures circulating around in the media have given rise to the concern that he expressed. I am prepared to say that it is right to give an assurance about the cap, but I am not prepared to say at this stage precisely what the cap will be. Before the Bill leaves the House, however, I will give such an assurance.

Rob Marris (Wolverhampton South West, Labour)

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his customary generosity, but I would like to probe him further on the cost. He says that the cost of a biometric passport will be about £65 and the cost of an identity card between £25 and £30, which comes to about £95 top whack. May I make the Home Secretary an offer? My passport expires in December 2011. If I write him a cheque for £100 now, will he agree that if the cost is more than £100 at that time, he will meet the extra? If it is below, he can either keep the extra, courtesy of myself, or give it to charity. Will he make that deal?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I am always interested in side deals with my hon. Friend, who is a talented and skilled financial operator. I will look into seeing whether a side deal is possible, but I am not going to arrange one on the Floor of the House this afternoon.

Tony Wright (Cannock Chase, Labour)

Surely the issue of cost changes if we move to compulsion. Having a card would then cease to be a matter of convenience and become a matter of necessity. Although a state may decide properly that it wants its citizens to have an identity card, it should not then also require them to pay for it.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

That is an entirely reasonable point and would be taken into consideration when the House came to consider proposals for compulsion. My view—for what it is worth, although I give no assurances—is that the charge would be significantly less than the amounts that have been mentioned, but I agree that at the point when a decision has to be made about compulsion, the question of charging would be a legitimate aspect for discussion.

Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow, Labour)

The cost of course depends on the model that is adopted. We have heard much about international requirements for biometric passports. I do not have a particular problem with having a passport with a biometric element: the problem is the database that lies behind it. What international requirements are there that would lead to the construction of the sort of database that is proposed in this country? I am totally unaware of any such requirements.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

There are none. I do not make the argument for the identity card process that we propose on the basis of an international requirement that we should do it. The argument that I was making about the international environment was about biometric passports. I argued that in the context of the cost factor, because many people have confused the cost of an identity card with the cost of a biometric passport plus an identity card. There is no international requirement or, indeed, suggestion that we should move towards an ID card system as a result of some international process elsewhere. However, it is important to be aware as we take our decisions in this country of the international trends in crime and other matters, and how best we can deal with those.

John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)

Many Opposition Members voted against the Second Reading of the previous Bill as a matter of principle and will do so again tonight. However, given that cost is a highly sensitive issue, will the Home Secretary give a categorical assurance to the House that full consideration will first be given to using the post office and Jobcentre Plus networks for the enrolment of citizens before seeking to secure substantial new premises that would inevitably greatly add to the cost of the scheme?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that precisely that idea is under consideration.

Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Devonport, Labour)

We have heard much this afternoon about the cost of the passport to individuals, but there will be a broader cost. I would welcome my right hon. Friend's comments on the precise impact on the wider economy of identity fraud. Some 3 to 5 per cent. of all fraud involves identity fraud and we all have constituents who have suffered the misery of that crime. How much does it cost our economy?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

My hon. Friend is right to say that identity fraud is a big issue, but I will deal with that in the next passage of my speech, if she does not mind—

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall give way twice more.

Helen Jones (Warrington North, Labour)

One can envisage a situation in which, even when identity cards are not compulsory, poor people become more and more disadvantaged—as they become more widely used—when opening bank accounts and accessing services. What steps will my right hon. Friend take to ensure that our poorer citizens are protected from that possibility and are able to access ID cards, if they wish to do so, in a way that is affordable and not too complex?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

My hon. Friend is entirely correct and that is why I made specific reference to that point earlier in my speech, when I addressed the business planning for the introduction of the card. I referred to the need to be sure that the charge, when finally set, takes account of the circumstances of less well-off citizens. My hon. Friend is right to raise that point and many other colleagues have also raised it. The assurance that I give is that when we come to look at the precise business plan for a charging regime, the particular point that she has made will be taken fully into account.

Quentin Davies (Grantham & Stamford, Conservative)

As usual, the Home Secretary is generous in giving way and we appreciate that.

May I take the right hon. Gentleman back to the issue of the common travel area with the Republic of Ireland? He was not as explicit about that as he might have been If the House votes for the Bill, is not it the case that we are heading towards a scenario in which, in 10 years' time or so, there will be three categories of people in the UK? First, citizens of the UK will have to have the identity card. Secondly, people from outside the UK and the Republic of Ireland will have to have a passport to be in the country legally and in practice at that time it may in cases be a biometric passport. Thirdly, citizens of the Republic of Ireland will be able to enter Northern Ireland or the rest of the United Kingdom, live there and do whatever they like with no document at all. Is not that a major hole in the intended comprehensiveness of the Home Secretary's system, and is not it an anomaly and an unfairness that will be difficult for the British people to accept?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I do not think that it is a major hole. There is no doubt that the Irish Government, the Dail, will look at the issues and decide what they want to do, but it is not necessary for us to say in the House that we shall require Irish citizens coming to the UK to have the same ID card as us. That would not be an appropriate course for us to follow. Equally, as was pointed out earlier, we have no obligation whatever to give any data held under our system to any foreign Government. The hon. Gentleman is entitled to say that we should work towards a situation where the joint travel area evolves well in a good working relationship. I agree, and that is what we shall do.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give way again later, but I want to make some progress.

The next stage of my argument relates to the benefits that the ID card will bring, because I do not think that they have yet been clearly set out. First, I shall set out the benefits to every individual who has a card. That builds on the point made about access to services by my hon. Friend Helen Jones. It will be a benefit to the individual to be able to make clear their identity in financial transactions—for example, opening bank accounts and in a wide range of other transactions—without having to produce a series of proxy documentation. In terms of obtaining public documents, I have already mentioned driving licences, passports and Criminal Records Bureau certificates. There is no doubt in my mind that the card will help individuals who need and want those documents.

For the reasons that I set out earlier, to have a card will be of major benefit in terms of international travel, whether for travel to the United States without a visa or more widely elsewhere in the world. Proof of identity in relation to law enforcement is also a benefit to the individual. Access to public services, as decided by those service providers, whether a library or any other form of public service, is another example of such a benefit.

My hon. Friend Alison Seabeck raised the issue of identity fraud. She is entirely correct. In 2004, an average of 50,000 people in the UK were victims of impersonation fraud. On average, it takes each victim 60 hours to resolve their case and clear their name. ID cards will make it more difficult to perpetrate identity theft and the high-quality verification service will reduce the time that it takes to deal with the damage. The British Bankers Association has stated that general banking losses due to identity fraud amount to £50 million. Those are substantial issues and show that the card will be of benefit to the individual.

The benefits to society include more effective crime fighting in a wide variety of ways; reducing serious and organised crime, people trafficking, money laundering and drug dealing; and reducing illegal migration and benefit fraud. Some hon. Members have been sceptical about the benefits of the card in dealing with terrorism, but I shall consider as an illustration the widely aired suggestion that ID cards did not stop the terrorist bombings in Madrid.

In fact, ID cards helped the Spanish police to identify who was responsible for the Madrid bombings, because in order to buy a mobile phone in Spain a person has to verify their identity with an ID card. According to the Spanish police, ID cards were a key element in tracking down the bombers. The cards also helped to identify the victims of the bombing so that their families could be informed.

Of course, Spanish ID cards do not contain the biometrics that we are discussing, so they can be forged more easily than the kind of card that we are describing. Our ID cards will be more successful. It is no coincidence—

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give way in a second, but I want to make my argument in my own way.

Jean-Louis Bruguière, France's top counter-terrorism investigator—it was reported in The Times on 1 June—claimed that identity cards would help Britain to protect itself from terrorist attacks. The head of Interpol said that in cases of terrorism multiple identities have been used by terrorists. The quantification of the benefits depends on the assumptions that we make and the programme that is established, but they are of the order of at least £0.5 billion a year. It depends on how fast the various benefits come on stream—the Criminal Records Bureau benefits and so on—but in sum, the benefits of this ID card system, first to every individual who has one, and secondly to the society, are real and substantial.

Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Highgate, Labour)

My right hon. Friend has referred to banks and to libraries, and he has referred to the ability of an ID card to prevent acts of international terror, but he has failed to tell the House how. Must every library have a machine that can ensure that the ID card that is presented is accurate? How are these cards to be verified in every single aspect of national life, from banks to libraries, to police stations, to accident and emergency, to hospitals, to doctors' surgeries, and who is going to pay for the machines that can read them?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

In each case, it will be a matter for the authority providing a public service to consider whether it is in its interests to have an ID card system. For example, if Camden council decides that it is beneficial to Camden council to have a different form of ID check in its libraries from the system that currently exists to ensure that people do not steal books, it will decide to put in the readers that are necessary. We are not requiring the authorities to do it; no one says that they have to do it. They will make a decision. [Interruption.] I hear a sedentary intervention saying that we are requiring people to carry cards. That is simply untrue, as I have said before, and that is precisely the point about this whole approach. My point, and it is a very serious point when we look at the benefits, is that each organisation will make its own assessment as to whether there is a benefit in having an ID card system.

Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green, Labour)

I am very grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. When the Leader of the Opposition told The Daily Telegraph last December that he had taken advice from senior police officers and security chiefs regarding the security of British citizens and that he could not disregard that, was he right then, or is he right now to ask my right hon. Friend to disregard it?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

To be quite candid, I decided not to go into this type of partisan political point, first because it is obviously alien to my character and is not the kind of thing that I would want to do, and secondly because it would be unfair. John Bercow made the point earlier that he voted against his party in December 2004 and intends to continue doing so. David Davis has reversed his position.

John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)

The party is on side now.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

From a sedentary position, the hon. Gentleman makes the position quite clear—and the embarrassed smiles of Opposition Members also make it quite clear—when he says, accurately, that the party is on side now. Mr. Howard has to explain his stewardship of the party over that period, and that really is a matter for him. I will not give in to the temptation that my hon. Friend Steve McCabe has offered me by suggesting that I deal with the matter in a particular way.

Damian Green (Ashford, Conservative)

May I bring the Home Secretary back to the benefits to the citizens of this country, particularly some of the most vulnerable? The Disability Rights Commission has said that the Government's own research

"shows that 62,000 disabled people will not be able to register their biometrics in any way",

and

"many hundreds of thousands of disabled people"

are

"likely to experience significant barriers to enrolment".

If libraries and other public services are going to depend on access to the identity card system, some of the most vulnerable disabled people in society will be among those who will be denied the alleged benefits.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

There are two points to make in response to that. First, the organisations concerned will decide whether they want to follow that course. Forms of identity can be used other than the ID card if that is more appropriate, but they will decide. Secondly, all of this has to be compliant with the current disability legislation; that is self-evident and that is how it stands.

Geraldine Smith (Morecambe & Lunesdale, Labour)

On people trafficking, international terrorism and illegal immigration, if identity cards are so helpful and so essential, why is this scheme voluntary?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

We hope to make it compulsory over time; we have set that out very clearly in the Bill. We have not waved a magic wand and made it compulsory now because the process of issuing ID cards for the whole population takes a good deal of time. But if you look, Mr. Speaker, at the great tragedies of which my hon. Friend has extensive experience—that is obvious from the way that she is talking about some of the people-trafficking issues—or other events that are equally shocking, such as the tragedy of the people who died in the container going across the channel—

Geraldine Smith (Morecambe & Lunesdale, Labour)

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will give way in a second.

If we look at the issues of people trafficking, there is absolutely no doubt: if we talk to those in any police organisation in the world, they will say that identity fraud, first, by the gangs who run such trafficking and, secondly, by the people who are being trafficked is a central weapon of their crime, and we should do everything that we can to stop that happening. My hon. Friend—I will give way to her again in a moment—effectively says "Do it faster!", and she has a powerful message. We can talk about doing it faster, but let us not draw the conclusion that we should not do it at all. Let us do better and make such things happen more quickly, rather than more slowly.

Geraldine Smith (Morecambe & Lunesdale, Labour)

I would also say, "Do not charge people from general taxation". On the Morecambe bay tragedy to which my right hon. Friend refers, is he aware that those Chinese illegal immigrants held permits to work and had false national insurance numbers? What would stop such people having false ID cards?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

That was a terribly tragic situation, but I am afraid that my hon. Friend makes the case that I am seeking to make. The falseness that she describes—to be honest, it arises with a number of the documents of people working in this country illegally—is possible because we do not have a substantial biometric element in the identification cards that exist. The biometric element will make a material difference to people's ability to forge those documents.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

This is so exciting. I will give way to the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

Edward Leigh (Gainsborough, Conservative)

The Home Secretary knows that the Home Office has a long record of difficulties with major IT projects. He well knows that evidence was given to the Home Affairs Committee by the United Kingdom Computer Research Committee, which said:

"we have deep scepticism about the Home Office's ability to specify, procure, implement a national, software intensive system on the scale that would be necessary."

Can the Home Secretary reassure the House that, in years to come, the permanent secretary of his Department will not appear before the Public Accounts Committee to defend himself against charges of massive cost overruns and massive increases in bureaucracy and difficulties with IT?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I can tell the House that the permanent secretaries of the Departments that I have been involved with always enjoyed coming to the hon. Gentleman's Committee to explain the situation, but I will come to the specific point in a moment.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I shall give way one more time, before making more progress.

Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central, Labour)

On the necessity of carrying a card, will the Home Secretary clarify two points? First, he cited the Spanish experience and said that the Spanish only managed to get those people because having an ID card is a requirement to get a mobile phone in Spain. Is he saying that that would be the situation in this country and that people who want a mobile phone must have an ID card? Secondly, he told the House that a card will not be necessary to gain access to public services, but clause 15(1) says precisely the opposite: someone who provides public services may make it a requirement to see an ID card. Is it his intention to delete clause 15(1) in Committee?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

First, the point that I was making about Madrid is very simple. Contrary to what some people allege, ID cards have had an impact in helping to address the issues of Madrid. I am not making any proposition about mobile phones or any other service, but I am saying that the suggestion that ID cards cannot address questions such as the appalling bombing in Madrid is not correct.

On the second point, the fact is that we are saying in the legislation—again, we can discuss this in Committee if my hon. Friend has concerns about it—that organisations are entitled to use ID cards to identify people in those circumstances after they have become compulsory, but that it will also be possible for individuals to use other material if they wish to do so. Of course, the detail of that matter can be discussed in Committee if we make progress, but that is where we are.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I will not give way again. I am going to make progress on the point about the capacity to run major projects made by Mr. Leigh. There are a lot of easy jibes of the type that he made, and I want to begin by giving the example of the Passport and Records Agency—an organisation that has issued 6.1 million passports in the past year, that has 47 million records across the country and that, as is very well known, had major problems in 1997, which caused concern throughout the House.

Only this year, the Comparisat benchmark survey, run by FDS International, surveyed a wide range of organisations based on their customer satisfaction and what was going on. Number one on that list was the UK Passport Service, which was followed by Asda, eBay, Amazon, Virgin Mobile, Morrisons, Tesco, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the Post Office, Boots and ScottishPower. I cite that example because it demonstrates that major public service projects, and even Home Office public service projects can, through investment in technology for massive schemes, beat the world—both the public and private sector—in the service that they offer to people. That is a tribute to what can be done.

I can cite other examples. The UK information technology industry is currently rolling out the introduction of chip and PIN in stores and shops throughout the country. The project involves 42 million consumers who hold more than 140 million credit and debit cards, 3 million retail staff in stores throughout the country and more than 250,000 bank branch and call centre staff. That massive project is being carried out well.

The Department for Work and Pensions payment modernisation system means that 22.5 million accounts are now paid by direct payment. The scheme was completed on time with less expenditure than was initially anticipated, and it will save more than £1 billion over the next five years. The same is true of NHS Direct. All those examples demonstrate that the public sector in general, and the Home Office in particular, has the capacity to undertake such major projects. Of course the projects must be well managed, and I could produce a list of private and public sector failures, but it is important to get a balance on the whole situation.

Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak, Labour)

Will the Secretary of State give way?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

Not at this stage.

Michael Martin (Speaker)

Order. I heard the Home Secretary say that he was not going to give way. I must remind the House that many hon. Members wish to speak and that interventions will eat into their time.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I am grateful, Mr. Speaker. I shall try to make progress and to give way only once more before I finish.

Our approach on the technology is straightforward. When the Bill has passed through Parliament, we intend to conduct trials of the technology, including small-scale tests, database tests and large-scale testing during roll-out. There has been a lot of concern about biometric identity cards, especially those using iris recognition, so I draw the House's attention to a report published earlier this week by the university of Cambridge computer laboratory. Its conclusion and recommendations indicate clearly and categorically:

"Iris recognition can be reliably used on a national basis in an Identity Cards scheme, including the capability for exhaustive iris code comparisons to detect multiple identities, if the decision policy employs a threshold criteria"—

it then sets out some technical details. These issues can thus be resolved.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I give way to my hon. Friend Mr. Prentice.

Gordon Prentice (Pendle, Labour)

Why can my friend not tell us the failure rate of identifying biometrics that would be acceptable? The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality told me today that that is still being determined through stakeholder consultation.

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

The report that I cited indicates that with irises on the database,

"with reasonable acceptance thresholds, the false match rate is less than 1 in 200 billion."

If there is iris recognition, facial recognition and fingerprint recognition, it significantly reduces the possibility of errors arising.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

I give way for a final time to Mr. Clifton-Brown.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Assistant Chief Whip, Whips; Cotswold, Conservative)

About 37 million people in this country aged over 16 would be liable to have an identity card over a period of time. There has been wide variation in the estimates of the cost of introducing the cards. The estimates range up to £5.5 billion, which would give a huge headline figure of about £140 per person. Whether that figure is accurate or not, will the Home Secretary undertake to produce a proper regulatory impact assessment of the costs that can be relied on before the House definitively makes up its mind on Third Reading?

Charles Clarke (Home Secretary; Norwich South, Labour)

We have already set out a regulatory impact assessment that can be relied on, but I repeat the assurance that I gave earlier: before the Bill leaves the House, we will produce data in the form that the hon. Gentleman wants.

On all the grounds that I have set out, the ID card will protect individuals against the Big Brother state, rather than the opposite. I have talked about the costs, benefits and technical issues. I tell my hon. Friends who are considering voting for the reasoned amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that accepting the amendment would be a vote against Second Reading, which would thus defeat the Bill, so I hope that they will agree not to do that. I commend the Bill to the House.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

May I congratulate the Home Secretary on a bravura performance in which he defended the indefensible? His performance was marked more by good humour than by hard facts—a point that I shall come to in a moment.

I shall start with an observation. If, 10 years ago, I had gone on the radio and said that within a decade a Labour Government would try to do away with jury trials, remove habeas corpus, eliminate the presumption of innocence, introduce punishment without trial and put house arrest on the statute book, I suspect that I would have been locked up. The Government, however, have tried to do every one of those things in the past few years; each time, they have chipped away at the basic liberties that we hold dear and which previous generations fought to protect. Today, the party which promised the generation of 1945 welfare from cradle to grave is about to give this generation surveillance from cradle to grave. We will not be party to such a measure.

The Home Secretary's proposals represent a fundamental shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the state. They are not just excessive but expensive; they are not just illiberal but impractical; they are not just unnecessary but unworkable, which is why this debate is important. The House has a serious choice to make today. We can choose to let the Government take one more step down the road to what their own Information Commissioner called the "surveillance society", or we can draw a line in the sand and say that enough is enough. We choose to draw that line, and invite anyone in the House who believes in liberty and freedom to do the same.

More than 50 years ago, the British courts ruled that the wartime identity card had outlived its usefulness, saying that it turned "law-abiding subjects into lawbreakers". As a result, Winston Churchill's Government introduced measures to abolish the card, but not before the three original purposes of the card had grown into 39 different uses. That is a warning to us all about the way in which Governments of all persuasions will take a mile of one's freedom if one gives them an inch. The Home Secretary will say that 50 years later times have changed, and indeed they have.

Douglas Hogg (Sleaford & North Hykeham, Conservative)

My right hon. Friend has drawn attention to the way in which Governments develop their proposals. Would he care to remind the House that the National Registration Act 1915 did not originally require citizens to produce a card on demand? The Act was amended in 1918 to introduce such a requirement. Does he not think that, if the Government enacted the Bill, in due course it would be amended to make the carrying and production of cards mandatory?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

My right hon. and learned Friend has anticipated my next point. I would simply add that many of the security benefits—one can argue that there are some benefits—arise only if it is compulsory to carry a card. One must presume from the Government's approach that they have that in mind for the next decade. My right hon. and learned Friend, however, has made my point for me.

Nick Palmer (Broxtowe, Labour)

Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept that it is misleading to suggest that to verify a claim of identity the police require the card itself, as they can merely check the claim against a database? His suggestion is one of the many misleading statements that are being made about the Bill.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

No, it is not misleading. Presumably, the police will have card readers that will make the process quicker, unless the hon. Gentleman is assuming that they will work off the biometrics. We have already heard that millions of our fellow citizens cannot provide those biometrics, so there is genuine concern that the Government will end up having to make such a requirement. I do not like to say so, but there is an intrinsic dishonesty in the way in which the Bill has been presented. The possession of a card has been presented as voluntary initially, then compulsory. This has not yet been said, but eventually it will become mandatory to carry one. We cannot otherwise achieve the benefits, including the Madrid benefits rightly raised by the Home Secretary. That is a dishonest way in which to present the Bill to the House.

I return to the more general point. The system that the Home Secretary is proposing will be far more sophisticated than that of the 1940s, the 1950s or the first war years. That makes it all the more important that what he is proposing is not open to misuse. The identity card itself is just the plastic embodiment of a much greater and potentially more pernicious thing—the new national identity register. That is what the Bill is essentially about.

The register is a massive database containing detailed personal information about every person in the country—a database that can be accessed by officials and public bodies without permission and without the person whom they are looking up ever knowing that it has happened. The Home Secretary talks about people exercising their rights under the Data Protection Act 1998. Very few people will do that, and it may be an expensive process. He did not outline any actions on the costs of that process, but if he wants to intervene, I will take a comment from him.

The individuals concerned may not know about that access, but the Government will, and they will keep a record of every time the card is used. They will know where we are and what we are doing. The Government's own Information Commissioner—remember, created and appointed by the Government, not some partisan person from outside; the person whose job it is to worry about the information handled by the Government—says that is "unnecessary". He says it is

"particularly worrying and cannot be viewed in isolation from other initiatives which serve to build a detailed picture of people's lives, such as CCTV surveillance, the use of automatic number plate recognition, recording vehicle movements for law enforcement, and the proposals to introduce satellite tracking of vehicles for road use charging".

Such a vision was originally set out by a man called Blair who changed his name to Orwell and wrote a book called "1984". It was supposed to be a warning, not a textbook.

Not long ago the Prime Minister was caught saying:

"Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on compulsory ID cards . . . let that money provide thousands more police officers on the beat in our local communities."

In that quote he was attacking what he called "the Tory Right". Today it is his new Labour Government who want to spend thousands of millions of pounds forcing us to sign up to be members of our own country.

As yesterday's report from the London School of Economics found—I do not want to give the Home Secretary dyspepsia—

"With the exception of Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Cyprus, no common law country in the world has ever accepted the idea of a peacetime ID card".

The Prime Minister has always been concerned about making his mark on history. That is quite a legacy to leave.

John Smith (Vale of Glamorgan, Labour)

On the point about countries that have chosen or not chosen to introduce the identity card, does the right hon. Gentleman think it significant that after the worst terrorist atrocity in human history, the United States of America considered the matter carefully in the 9/11 commission and rejected the case for an ID card?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. The reason the common law countries are unique in this respect is that they are the countries that presume that the citizen is free to do anything unless there is a law against it. That is rather different from the Napoleonic law countries. If America can get by without an identity card, it is hard to see why we cannot.

I have always made it clear that before the events of 9/11 I would never have even countenanced the concept of an identity card, but since 9/11, in my present post, I accepted that we should listen to the Government's case, just as we should consider any possible device that could make our country and our people safer. Having done so, including considering what the Home Secretary said today, I conclude that the Government's identity card will be little more than an expensive waste of time and money. It is a plastic poll tax, and it is a symbol of this Government's determination to centralise and control everything at the expense of the liberties of the British people. Longstanding freedoms cannot and should not be given away cheaply; they should only be given up on the basis of compelling and exceptional need. All Opposition Members understand that principle, but the Government's record shows that they do not.

Some months ago, I set the Home Secretary five tests, some of which he referred to today. Had he met them, we might have been persuaded to give the previous Bill a fair wind before the election, but he failed to respond adequately to any of the questions. Fortunately for us, other people have come up with the answers to those questions, but unfortunately for the Home Secretary, the answers are universally unhelpful to his case.

I asked the Home Secretary precisely what the purpose of the cards would be. ID cards were originally presented as a response to the terrorist threat after 9/11, which is why I was prepared to listen in the first place. Despite the Home Secretary's comments today, the Government no longer make that case—they know that ID cards would not take effect for many, many years and that terrorists would not be deterred by them. Furthermore, the cards will not be compulsory, so they will not have any effect. Whatever the Home Secretary has said, ID cards did not deter the bombers in Madrid, and they would not have helped in New York, either. If the technology ever becomes effective, terrorists will bypass it, and I shall return to that point.

At times, ID cards have been presented as entitlement cards to tackle benefit fraud—as an aside, the cost of benefit fraud is tiny by comparison with the cost of ID cards, even if one accepts the Government's numbers, which I do not. ID cards were also supposed to tackle illegal working, but in October last year, the previous Home Secretary was back to justifying them on the ground of welfare fraud.

The Home Secretary has said:

"Identity cards will provide a simple and secure way of verifying identity, helping us to tackle illegal working, organised crime, terrorist activity, identity theft and fraudulent access to public services."—[Hansard, 7 February 2005; Vol. 430, c. 1183.]

However, his predecessor admitted that ID cards will not tackle terrorism; the Law Society says that ID cards will not tackle illegal working; and Liberty and the Law Society say that ID cards will not tackle crime. The purpose of ID cards remains unclear, and the Government's case has been, at best, slippery.

A recent article in The Observer stated:

"The Government's motives have been obscured by the ad hoc way in which claimed advantages pile up. Our trust in the state to handle our data safely is undermined by this shifting account of the purpose of ID cards".

It is now clear that ID cards will not fight terrorism, tackle crime, control immigration or stop fraud. They have no effective purpose.

Simon Hughes (Shadow Secretary of State for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister & Party President, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; North Southwark & Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)

Do the right hon. Gentleman's remarks mean that it is now the Conservative party's settled opinion that ID cards are unacceptable in this country? Will he make it clear that he is taking a position that we have held for 50 years or more and that many Labour Members have held for all their political lives? The Bill will not get through this Parliament, because it will not obtain a majority in the other place. If the Government were to force it through by some device, those in favour of liberty would repeal it before it ever came into force.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

I agree absolutely with the hon. Gentleman's last point—I will let his earlier political points go—and my party and I would not be party to such a thing.

Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills, Conservative)

The Home Secretary has said that the Bill will enable us to assert our right to be here. It is an extraordinary departure from who we are as a people that all hon. Members must assert their right to be here through the Home Secretary's benighted ID cards scheme.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

We have seen window taxes and poll taxes, but this is a breathing tax. The right to citizenship of this kingdom is acquired at birth and is not at the behest of the Government.

John Bercow (Buckingham, Conservative)

A variation on the theme highlighted by my hon. Friend Mr. Shepherd is the argument enunciated by Mr. Blunkett as long ago as November 2003, when he said that identity cards were about tackling alienation and asserting our sense of belonging. I have met several people in my constituency who have complained that they felt alienated from the community, others who felt alienated from the Government, and a proportion who felt alienated from both, but I have yet to meet a single one who has said, "John, I'm alienated—I have an identity crisis, and I can't assert my sense of belonging until the Home Secretary gives me my identity card."

Alan Haselhurst (Deputy Speaker)

Before the right hon. Gentleman replies, I remind hon. Members that interventions are getting longer and there is a very long list of speakers.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for rescuing me from having to reply.

The second test is this: does the technology exist to make the system work? Again, the Home Secretary has not answered the question, but other people have. One group, which knows far more about these things than our famously technophobic Prime Minister, said:

"This will undoubtedly be a large and centralised system as currently outlined in the bill, and this type of system attracts a high risk of failure."

That was the British Computer Society, which I suspect knows rather better than others what it is talking about.

One of the most potent criticisms of the Government's plan, however, is that it will make fraud easier. This card will become a master key for fraudsters. Its intention is to give, if I can use the Home Secretary's words, "legitimacy" to someone's identity, but if that identity is fraudulent in the first place, it only makes the problem worse. One expert in this area says:

"ID cards will exacerbate the situation. The stakes are raised that much higher if the master key is cracked; it opens the door to all sorts of frauds."

It is extremely likely that this ID card system will actually make fraud easier by doing exactly that.

Kali Mountford (Colne Valley, Labour)

The right hon. Gentleman is making the case that the identity secured could be a false identity in the first place, thereby allowing for further frauds. However, what does he say about those people who continually change identity and continually try to evade justice and hide themselves by defrauding the system? Would not this system at least put a stop to that at a particular point and prevent them from continually changing their identities?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

No. In about two minutes, I will explain to the hon. Lady why that will, unfortunately, remain too easy.

Before I get to that, I want to deal with the next test, which is the question of whether the Home Office could do this. The Home Secretary showed admirable loyalty in defending his Department on that issue, but again, did not answer the question despite its being asked by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. Other people, however, have answered that question.

Let us recount some of the computer projects that the Government have made a hash of. Last week, we saw that the tax credits system is in chaos because of IT problems. The Home Office itself is one of the worst-offending Departments when it comes to IT management. Remember the police national computer? One would think that that would be very accurate because it has biometric data associated with it, but an audit recently found that 65 per cent. of its files contained errors. Remember the asylum seeker processing system? With a budget of £80 million, the project was scrapped after it was found to be flawed. Remember the infamous Passport Agency project? Its delivery was delayed and it eventually came in £12.5 million over budget. Before the supposed good performance that the Home Secretary told us about, the failures led to more than 500,000 people waiting for passports in the early summer of 1999.

The important point to understand here is that one good year in six is not good enough for a computer that is fundamental to our security systems.

Douglas Hogg (Sleaford & North Hykeham, Conservative)

And there is another point—if these cards are a prerequisite to obtaining benefit from public services, a person who cannot get a valid card cannot get their benefit.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

My right hon. and learned Friend makes an excellent point, with which I shall deal shortly.

Of all the Departments, the Home Office is the last that one would want to put in charge of such a scheme. Identity cards are not only ineffective and open to fraud but we have no faith in the Government's ability to make them work.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

Is not the position even worse, in that the Home Office's study on whether the scheme can be realised showed extraordinarily high failure rates for the biometrics?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman is right. It is interesting that the Home Office is relying on the cumulative effect of all the biometrics working, yet many thousands of people will, in one way or another, be cut out of public services or unable to be identified because 1 million or more people are excluded.

The most contentious issue is cost. In one respect, I agree with the Home Secretary. He told the BBC that there was an obligation on him

"to set out the figures in the clearest and most substantive way".

The trouble is that he has not done that. He recently admitted that the original figure of £93 per card was only an indicative unit cost. Once charges are added, the price will go up even more.

What is the cost? The Government appear to have no clue. We realised that when the Home Secretary was asked about local government expenditure on libraries and so on. However, fortunately for the Government—the Home Secretary will not agree—the London School of Economics has been able to provide an estimate. Unfortunately for the Government, it is much more than they let on. [Interruption.] "Think of a number, then treble it" is probably a good way of estimating Home Office cost outcomes.

The LSE states that the true cost of implementing the proposed scheme will be between £10.6 billion and £19.2 billion. That could raise the average cost of each card, without means testing, to £230 a person. That tax will fall on hard-working taxpayers and poorer pensioners on fixed incomes. It may not be much money for the Home Secretary or members of the Government, but for the poorest in our society, it is more than a month's food bill. Worse, councils will have to find a further £10 billion to cover local costs for new technology and staff training.. That is the figure that the Home Secretary could not find earlier. The cost will inevitably be passed on in higher council tax bills or higher general taxes.

Stephen McCabe (Birmingham, Hall Green, Labour)

I recognise the right hon. Gentleman's opposition to the Bill, but does he stand unequivocally by every assumption and calculation in the LSE report?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

I shall revert to that shortly. However, there are two external reports—the Kable report and the LSE report. Both estimate the cost of the scheme as approximately between £15 billion and £19 billion. That is roughly three times the figure with which the Home Office has come up. As I shall explain, the figures in the reports are more plausible than those of the Home Office. We are considering a 10-year programme and anyone who estimates the cost as being less than a few billion pounds at this stage is unwise.The Home Secretary disputes the LSE's figures, but another company has also estimated the cost to be approximately £15 billion. An expert from Belgium who advised the Government on their plans said:

"I'm afraid a lot of money will be wasted and that the real cost will be much higher than any of the figures currently being suggested".

Whom should we believe—independent organisations or the Government? The Government claimed that the criminal court computer system would cost less than £150 million but the actual cost was £400 million. The Government said that moving GCHQ's computers to another building would cost £20 million, yet it cost £450 million. Recently the Government overspent on computer projects by £2 billion. Why should we believe them?

Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central, Labour)

Given the importance of cost, would not it be more satisfactory for the House to proceed by inviting a Select Committee to hold an inquiry into the costs to establish whether the disparity between the LSE figures and those of the Government is credible, and to reach a figure on which the House can agree before we make a final decision on the Bill?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. He may remember that on Second Reading, and I think even on Third Reading, I offered the Government a Joint Committee. The idea had stemmed from the newest Member of the House, my hon. Friend Sir Patrick Cormack—who, of course, is not really the newest Member at all. It struck me as a sensible idea, and I put it to the Government twice. Twice the Government turned it down. I do not think we can stand by and let the Bill proceed through its stages after being turned down twice and not being given a proper response by the Government twice.

Andrew Love (Edmonton, Labour)

Does not the essential difference between the LSE's position and that of the Government lie in whether there is a 10-year or a five-year cycle for identity cards? Does not all the evidence about biometrics suggest that the cycle should be closer to five years than to 10?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

That was part of the difference, as I understand it. I do not think that the Home Secretary was right when he said that it doubled the cost; I think it adds several hundred million pounds, but I do not think it doubles the cost. As for the other point, what is the practical cycle for biometrics? One of them involves a picture of the individual's face. The Government say that 10 years is good enough, while the LSE favours five years. I have known the Home Secretary for more than 10 years, and I think he has changed a bit in that time. I would go for the five-year cycle if I were him.

Martin Linton (Battersea, Labour)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

I think that I should finish what I have to say. We must allow some other Members to speak at some point today.

Why should people have to pay for the Prime Minister's pet project? Will they have to pay to change their names when they get married? Will they have to pay again when they change their addresses?

Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire, Conservative)

Or their gender.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

Or their gender, indeed. I do not know whether that is an expression of ambition. Now I am shocking the Home Secretary.

Who will pay for the means testing? Who will carry it out—means testing, that is, not gender change? What will it cost? All those questions remain unanswered.

Kate Hoey (Vauxhall, Labour)

Will the right hon. Gentleman give us his take on what the Home Secretary said about what I would describe as the Irish question? Did the right hon. Gentleman understand the Home Secretary to say that those who live in this country and perceive themselves to be Irish—many of my constituents have lived in this country for many years, and still consider themselves to be Irish—would need identity cards?

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

According to what I understood the Home Secretary to say, the answer is no. There is a huge lacuna in this proposal.

Simon Hughes (Shadow Secretary of State for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister & Party President, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; North Southwark & Bermondsey, Liberal Democrat)

No library books for the Irish!

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

A new Liberal Democrat policy is being founded, it seems.

The simple fact is that there is a common travel area between us and Ireland, and I understand that there is no proposal to change that. It gives citizens of each country an absolute right to travel freely in the other country. The Irish Parliament may well choose not to introduce a system like this, but if it does, such a system—contrary to what the Home Secretary said earlier—will require information exchange. It is impossible for an identity card system to work in two countries without the exchange of information between them.

Andrew MacKinlay (Thurrock, Labour)

There is no way the Irish Parliament would accept that.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

I suspect that there is no way a number of members of the Democratic Unionist party would accept it either, but that is another matter. There is a serious problem here, which cuts a huge hole in proposals for any serious security-based identification mechanism.

It is no surprise that the Government's plans have come to be seen as a plastic poll tax. They are excessive, expensive, unnecessary, unworkable and, now, unpopular. They have no clear purpose, and they are no guarantee against fraud. It is hard to escape the conclusion that they are an answer in search of a question or a solution in search of a problem.

All along, I have made it clear that I would not normally countenance ID cards, but I was prepared to give the Government a chance to make their case. In my view, however, they have failed to do so. ID cards represent a clear and present threat to the everyday freedoms and liberties of the British people. Some people question why there is such concern about a little plastic card. The answer is that there is not. There is concern about what lies behind that little plastic card.

The Government are planning to establish a massive identity database in Whitehall that will contain all sorts of personal information about people in this country. The database will have a number of access points, and there will be nothing to prevent someone from inserting a virus at any one of those access points which could render the entire database open to fraud. When I asked some of Britain's most senior police officers what could be done to stop that happening, they could not give me an answer. Even today, no one has been able to do so. The concerns remain.

Last month, the New Statesman reported a meeting with a young professional mathematician, who said that it "wouldn't be hard" to steal someone's identity under the Government's scheme. He asked:

"What's a biometric? It tells you that this card matches that iris. It doesn't tell you who I am, though. I'd just take someone else's life details . . . register those with my own biometric and name. There, I've faked an ID".

Do the Government have a solution to that problem? No. Even worse, the mathematician went on to state that

"half the members of every university maths department in Britain"

could probably break the system. I know that fewer people are studying maths under this Government, but even so, that would be too many.

John Baron (Shadow Minister, Health; Billericay, Conservative)

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, even if the biometrics were 100 per cent. foolproof, which many of us doubt, the problem with preventing terrorism would be that, under the present legislation, terrorists would still have the option to cross national boundaries using tourist visas that were not based on biometrics? This casts a great deal of doubt on the use of ID cards in relation to the prevention of terrorism.

David Davis (Shadow Home Secretary, Home Affairs; Haltemprice & Howden, Conservative)

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We must also remember the three-month period—I almost said "exclusion zone"—allowed for people visiting from the European Union. Also, it is well known in security circles that the identity card systems of some countries on the continent are easier to get into than others. They could provide an access point, too. The gateway control in this scheme will be incredibly difficult. Huge numbers of people will be involved. The Passport Office stated today that about 4.5 million people a year would have to be interviewed in the near future. That gives us an idea of the sheer size of the problem. The system will, I am afraid, be eminently penetrable.

The database will also be open to abuse. A disgruntled Minister, official or civil servant could access information about anyone in the country, pretty much at the touch of a button. People might say that that seems like paranoia, but I remember how this Government tried to smear Pam Warren of the Paddington survivors' group, to savage the reputation of 94-year-old Rose Addis, and to rubbish the reputations of Martin Sixsmith and David Kelly.

The Home Secretary was at it again this morning. He launched a savage attack on Simon Davies of the LSE—[Interruption.] I do not know what the Home Secretary has against people called Davies. I have nothing against people called Clarke. His savage attack on this respected academic was implicitly an attack on the 14 senior professors involved in the LSE's project, but he picked out that particular man and called him "partisan" and "technically incompetent". Why? Because he disagrees with the Home Secretary. As usual, if the Government do not like the message, they shoot the messenger. We have seen this time and again; the way in which the Government treat people who disagree with them is a disgrace, and this does not make me any more inclined to support plans that would give them even more control over the public's personal information.

The Bill is a step too far. If the Government really want to tackle benefit fraud, there are better ways of doing it. If they want to tackle crime, they should put more police on the streets. If they want to tackle terrorism, they should introduce greater control and surveillance at British ports. If their plan is to tackle illegal working, they should get a grip on the shambles of the asylum system. For each and every problem that will supposedly be dealt with by ID cards, there is a better, cheaper and more cost-effective solution that does not threaten to remove the long-held and fought-for freedoms of the British people.

There was a time when Labour Governments were elected to fight poverty, but the cost of ID cards will only make people poorer. There was a time when they tried to pursue fairness, but as the GMB trade union says, ID cards will discriminate against and stigmatise minority and disabled groups. There was a time when the Labour party stood up for people's freedoms. Since 1997, it has been attacking our freedom piece by piece and bit by bit.

Today's proposals are the final straw. We should not be party to seeing them passed. We will not be thanked by today's generation for whom the extra cost will be too much to bear. We will not be thanked by future generations, who will look back to today and ask why we let this change occur. We will not be thanked by an older generation who fought to protect the very liberty that we now propose to give away. We should not countenance these plans, which are illiberal and impractical, excessive and expensive, unnecessary and unworkable. That is why we will vote against the Bill this evening.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Alan Haselhurst (Deputy Speaker)

Order. I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 10-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, which comes into operation now.

David Winnick (Walsall North, Labour)

To get matters in perspective, perhaps we should remember that the Leader of the Opposition was an ardent supporter of ID cards, and had he got his way it is likely that a Tory Government would have introduced them. I am also pretty certain that we, the then Opposition, would have opposed them. I am not sure whether there is some consistency there.

Even were there not the many practical problems in relation to technology, the final cost and so on, I would have the utmost reservations about the reintroduction of identity cards. I do not believe that they are necessary; indeed, I believe that they are irrelevant to the many problems that we undoubtedly face. I would require compelling and coherent reasons for such cards to be brought back after more than half a century. However ably my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary put forward his case today, I simply do not believe that a real case has been made for identity cards. I said earlier—obviously, my assessment could be wrong—that were there to be a free vote tonight, this Bill would not get a Second Reading.

All the problems that have been mentioned as reasons why we should have identity cards are undoubtedly problems—no one denies that. Most EU countries have identity cards, which in some cases date back to dictatorships—although I do not question that those countries are now as much democracies as the United Kingdom—but do not those countries have problems with illegal immigration, benefit fraud and identity fraud? Are those not problems that are common to virtually all industrialised, advanced countries? It is therefore difficult to see the argument that such problems would be solved if we had identity cards, which are pretty useless unless compulsory—what purpose is a voluntary identity card?—so obviously compulsion will come in due course.

Nick Palmer (Broxtowe, Labour)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Winnick (Walsall North, Labour)

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will continue.

The previous Home Secretary accepted, like my right hon. Friend today, that the mass murders that took place in Istanbul and Madrid would not have been prevented by identity cards, however biometric they might be. I did hear my right hon. Friend say today, however, that it was easier for the Spanish to identify the culprits. I have doubts about that. After all, the Spanish have been faced with a long, murderous campaign by ETA, and have they been successful in identifying those responsible? Again, I have doubts.

We are told that the police consider that the cards would generally be a help. Were it left to the police, however, I wonder whether identity cards would ever have been abolished in the first place. As hon. Members know, a case brought by a police constable in 1952, which was thrown out by the court, led the Government of the day to abolish them.

As has been mentioned, all this started some three years ago as a Home Office consultation document described as being about entitlement, not identity cards. It gave all the reasons—such as fraud and so on—why it would be useful to have what was described as an entitlement card. It had nothing to do with terrorism whatsoever. Indeed, the point was made in that 2002 Home Office consultation document that in respect of identity fraud, such a card could do a disservice. It argued that too much reliance would be placed on the card and that the usual safeguards currently employed by financial institutions and others could go by the board.

I have the utmost fear that—

Douglas Hogg (Sleaford & North Hykeham, Conservative)

The implied admission by the Home Office is that identity cards can be forged.

David Winnick (Walsall North, Labour)

No one would deny the obvious, which is that biometric cards would be that much more difficult to forge. We can take that for granted, but it is difficult to believe that international criminal gangs—they are very different from the round-the-corner gangs—that would have so much incentive to forge these cards would not try to do so. It is also difficult to believe that they would not prove successful in some respects. So even on the issue of forgery, we should not be too complacent.

Nick Palmer (Broxtowe, Labour)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

David Winnick (Walsall North, Labour)

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not.

When the Home Affairs Committee took evidence, the point was made by a number of witnesses that it is not just the identity card but the database and the national identity register that should give a good deal of cause for concern. They certainly gave me, if not my colleagues on the Home Affairs Committee, cause for concern. Indeed, rather than voting for the majority report, I wrote a minority amendment to it.

If this proposal comes to fruition, even when we change address—except for the shortest possible period—we will have to notify the authorities. Some may say, "Why should we not?" I say, "Why should we?" It is argued that the authorities already hold a great deal of information on individuals via the national health service and national insurance, for example, but that is not the subject of any controversy. Indeed, Labour Members are all in favour of holding information relating to welfare benefits and so on, but that is not an argument for extending the amount of information held by the authorities; it is certainly not an argument for having the proposed database.

In fact, schedule 1 could be amended not by primary but by secondary legislation, so that the list of information that might be included on the register could be added to. That is why there is concern about function creep. It is true that such information could be added to only with the authority of both Houses. Nevertheless, more such information will be added over time, and the Government of the day—it might not be a Labour Government—will justify doing so by claiming that it is absolutely essential.

There is a particular point to which I cannot help returning. If what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary had to say today is so reassuring, why is the Information Commissioner so concerned? He is not involved in party politics. He is not trying to make party political points. He has a job to do. In the light of the points that he has made, which have been quoted today—indeed, he made others when he gave evidence before the Home Affairs Committee—we should certainly be worried. He told the Committee that if such cards were introduced, there would be a sea change in the relationship between the state and the individual. Are we simply going to dismiss such points, saying that they are of no importance? This is why some of us continue to be so concerned about what is happening.

I do not believe that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and his Cabinet colleagues have a hidden agenda. I do not believe that they are trying to bring about the kind of society that the Opposition spokesman claimed. I have known a good number of Ministers for many years and I have no reason to doubt their integrity. In my view, they believe that they are acting in the national interest. It is not their integrity but their judgment that I question. On this issue, they are wrong. They have not considered sufficiently all the proposal's implications.

I realise that it is argued that, regardless of critics in the House of Commons and in the other place, public opinion is more or less in favour of identity cards—but public opinion can shift. One reason why public opinion has so far been in favour is the result of high expectations. It is thought that the problems of illegal immigration, asylum seekers and all the rest of it—problems that we encountered on the doorstep time and again during the election campaign—will all be resolved if only we have identity cards. However, as the cost comes to be more widely known, attitudes will change. Even if we dismiss the figures of the London School of Economics, which may have exaggerated the costs, it is pretty certain that the costs now ventured by the Government are unlikely to be the final costs. Who really believes otherwise?

I have very carefully considered—it is a matter for me as an individual, as I do not belong to any particular grouping within the parliamentary party—how I should vote. I always knew that I could not vote in favour of the Bill. Given the strong views that I have long held on this issue since the idea of ID cards was first introduced, that would be a form of political prostitution on my part. I asked myself whether I should therefore abstain because I am a supporter of the Government and I want them to do well. As a Labour Member, I obviously want the Government to be re-elected in due course. However much I tried to justify to myself the idea of abstaining, I simply could not do so. I have therefore reached the conclusion that it would be totally wrong—indeed, in some respects even dishonourable—for me to do other than vote against the Bill on Second Reading. That is what I must do.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

As politicians, we always have to make judgments before supporting any measure. We need to be convinced in the first place that we understand and agree with the purpose of legislation; then we have to believe that the costs are not excessive either to society or the individual. Thirdly, we need to be convinced that any measure can work and be effective. Finally, and most importantly for Liberals, we need to be convinced that the impact on society and civil liberties will not be extensive. On all four counts, we believe that the Identity Cards Bill fails. I want to explore some of those issues in greater detail.

Let us first consider the Bill's purpose. The Government keep changing their minds—every time that they advance an argument and it is knocked down, they have to find a different argument in favour. They started off with terrorism, before moving to health tourism; then it was benefit fraud; then illegal working; and now, finally, they are going for ID theft. On each occasion, the argument is put forward and then defeated.

Dealing with terrorism is the first justification. Liberal Democrats never underestimated the need to put forward measures to make this country safer in respect of a terrorist attack. However, as we have already heard in the debate, the issue of whether a terrorist identity is critical is, in fact, a false argument. We know what happened in Madrid and New York, and we know from the cases of David Copeland and Richard Reed that those individuals made no attempt to disguise their identities. The Home Secretary mentioned Madrid, but I specifically went there to speak to the authorities in order to ascertain whether ID cards would have made a difference. The authorities were very clear indeed that they did not believe that having an ID card would have made any difference; it would not have helped to stop the terrorist attack. To put it bluntly, a determined suicide bomber or terrorist will not be deterred by such a card. The problem of identity is, in most cases, simply not an issue.

Tom Harris (Glasgow South, Labour)

Does the hon. Gentleman nevertheless accept what my right hon. Friend said in his statement—that even if ID cards could not have prevented the Madrid atrocities, they certainly helped the authorities to track down the culprits?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

In that particular case, that is so, but it would not necessarily require an ID card to make the link with a mobile phone. In other words, there are other ways of achieving that.

About a third of terrorists use multiple forms of identity, so the Government have claimed that ID cards would help in tracking down terrorists. Once again, that is a false and a dangerous argument. Nothing in what the Government have suggested would prevent international terrorists from coming into this country with false documents—what are known as seed documents—and registering under a different name for an ID card with their biometrics on it. Indeed, that highlights the danger of ID cards providing a false sense of security. Unless an international system is put in place, and countries such as Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia all signed up to the same form of biometrics, there is no reason to assume that individuals could be stopped from moving around with different identities in different countries.

Kali Mountford (Colne Valley, Labour)

I shall put to the hon. Gentleman the question that I put to David Davis. I accept the argument that someone may register under a false identity in the first place, but how does that person then obtain five or six more identities in order to evade justice?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

That is what people are doing already. They will be able to move from country to country because the biometric systems will not be available in those countries. It is a fundamental flaw in the terrorist argument.

The final argument on terrorism is simple. If it is so urgent, and if the threat from terrorists in this country is so compelling, why will we have to wait 10 years for the system to become compulsory? If we need it for that reason, surely we need it now.

The next argument the Government made was on benefit fraud. The Home Office and other Departments' figures on benefit fraud show that only 5 per cent. of cases of benefit fraud relate to people pretending to be somebody else. That equates to some £50 million of fraud a year. The vast amount of benefit fraud involves individuals pretending to have something wrong with them when they do not—it does not involve issues of identity. Therefore, ID cards will do nothing to help tackle that problem.

Then the Government raised the issue of health tourism and health fraud. However, the Home Secretary did not clarify how ID cards would be used to combat that problem. What would happen? Would I have to have my iris scanned or fingerprints taken before I could see my GP? Would every post office have a reader in place to prevent benefit fraud? If someone wants to access emergency health care at an accident and emergency department, would they have to have their iris scanned? Who will manage that process? Would we ask front-line professionals in the health service to take decisions about who they scan? If the programme is not to be rolled out nationally, would the Government suggest that certain health authorities in areas with certain types of ethnic communities should be encouraged to implement that programme?

Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe & Nantwich, Labour)

During the course of taking evidence on laser surgery, it became clear to me that most consultant optometrists agreed that accurate information would not be available, even with modern techniques. They made it clear that they thought that the system would not work.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

I am grateful for that intervention and I shall deal shortly with the failure rate of iris scans in the Home Office's own studies.If the reason for ID cards is health fraud, it obviously has not been thought through and it is hard to see how any system would operate.

Martin Linton (Battersea, Labour)

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the national health service makes no checks on identity before providing emergency treatment? Does he suggest that the NHS should make no checks on entitlement to free treatment when it has such checks at its disposal?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

When the hon. Gentleman went into an accident and emergency department to have his arm treated, would he have liked it if a front-line professional had had to ask for his identity before that could be done? How would such a proposal operate in reality and how would we fund having iris scanners or other biometric equipment in every department in the health service? It is not workable.

Martin Linton (Battersea, Labour)

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that it is NHS policy not to make any identity checks when people come into accident and emergency departments, but only after the emergency has been dealt with?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

It makes no difference at what point identity is checked. The point is whether we should ask the health service to fund the checks or ask health professionals to take decisions about whether to ask for the information. I do not want to live in a society in which I have to have my fingerprints or other biometric information taken before I can be treated.

I wish to move on to the Government's next argument, which was about tackling illegal working. This is one of the Government's most disingenuous arguments. We all want to tackle illegal working, but we already have a system in place where individuals who come into this country as asylum seekers or workers have to possess a form of identification. It is possible for the police or the gangmasters who employ such people to check those working documents. What difference will it make if those individuals have to have an ID card? Will the police carry out more checks than they do at present? Will the gangmasters suddenly demand to see ID cards before they employ those people? Sadly, the kind of people who employ illegal workers will not take part in that process. The idea that ID cards will tackle illegal working can be dismissed.

What about the Government's latest suggestion that the card will deal with identity theft? Again, they have got it wrong. The Government argue that about £1.3 billion of identity theft takes place in the UK, but a vast amount occurs through the internet or with credit cards, so I fail to understand how an ID card will tackle that problem. The Association for Payment Clearing Services says that only 36 million of the 500 million cases of plastic fraud are classified as identity fraud. The association is not convinced that an ID card will help in tackling those issues, especially internet fraud. The Government have put up an argument about ID theft, but in reality the ID card will not help to tackle that issue.

Robert Marshall-Andrews (Medway, Labour)

On that interesting issue, the document notes that £400 million of that £1.3 billion related to money laundering. In 2001, such cases involved people going into bureaux de change with suitcases full of old, mainly Scottish, notes. That is where the money comes from, so how will the situation be improved by an identity card?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. and learned Gentleman makes my point. The Government state a figure, make out that there is a major problem and suggest that ID cards can solve it. In reality when we break down the figures we realise that the cards will not help to deal with the problem.

Even if we were to accept that all those problems could be solved by the use of ID cards, and even if we bought into the Government's arguments, from terrorism to ID theft, we would still have to consider whether we can set up such a system at a reasonable cost. That is the most complex part of the debate.

The Liberal Democrats accept the need to upgrade passports, so we are arguing not against the total cost, but against the costs that are additional to what we accept needs to be done under our international responsibilities. However, the problem is that the Government are, yet again, being disingenuous; they are suggesting a level of upgrade for passports that is not actually needed, and in doing so they are trying to hide and bring in the full cost of ID cards under a passport scheme. That is wrong both in my judgment and in that of the authors of the LSE report, who state:

"We find that the Government is unnecessarily binding the identity card scheme to internationally recognised requirements on passport documents. By doing so, the Government has failed to correctly interpret international standards, generating unnecessary costs, using untested technologies and going well beyond the measures adopted in any other country that seeks to meet international obligations."

We are gold-plating-plus what is required for the upgrading of passports, and the Government are using that to hide some of the costs of ID cards.

We do not need to look at the recent LSE report for the costings or to listen to Kable's assessment of the costs; we simply have to look at the Government's own costs to realise that they are spiralling out of control. When the House last debated the costs involved, we were told that the cost for an individual would be about £77 and that the overall cost would be £3.1 billion—yet according to the Government's figures today the cost will be £93 for an individual and the overall total has risen to £5.8 billion. In such a short time, there has been a huge increase. That is not a dodgy LSE report but the Home Office's estimate of the costs.

David Heath (Shadow Leader of the House of Commons; Somerton & Frome, Liberal Democrat)

Another cost to the individual has not been highlighted. We are told that what the Government euphemistically call enrolment centres, where people are supposed to be measured, will be no more than 45 minutes travel time. That is a fantasy in rural areas where 45 minutes would take a person no further than the bus stop outside their house, because there are no buses. For a large number of people in rural areas, there would be a huge additional cost to get to an enrolment centre to be measured. Should not those people receive a rebate if there is to be equity?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point in several regards. There will be the cost and inconvenience of travel to those large processing centres, especially in rural areas. I have visited one such centre outside Madrid; it was huge. The Government have not fully factored in the additional hidden costs of building such enormous centres all over the country.

Douglas Hogg (Sleaford & North Hykeham, Conservative)

The point goes even further than Mr. Heath suggests. People in rural areas will have to take a whole day off work, and that is an enormous cost to an individual.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

Imagine an average family with two teenage children and maybe a granny, and you can bet your bottom dollar the person will have to go to the centre four or five times a year, taking different family members each time. The public have not realised the costs and inconvenience involved. When they realise that that is what they will actually have to do—

Adam Afriyie (Windsor, Conservative)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

I will give way one more time.

Adam Afriyie (Windsor, Conservative)

Does the hon. Gentleman consider it dignified for the elderly and those with disabilities to queue to have their retinas scanned and their fingerprints taken to be processed by the Government?

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

It is certainly much more intrusive than the current system, which involves going to Boots to have a photograph taken and then sending the passport off. We must recognise that the process and the way it is handled will have quite an impact on people who feel uncomfortable about having their fingerprints, face and irises scanned.

Several hon. Members:

rose—

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

I want to move on.

There is another issue, in relation to costs. If the Government are serious about rolling out the scheme to tackle benefit fraud, have they considered the cost of putting scanning machines in all the outlets? We are told, again from Home Office figures, that the reading equipment will cost between £250 and £750. Just putting readers in every single post office would cost £11 million. Interestingly, the Home Secretary seemed to imply that the decision whether to purchase readers would be down to individual authorities. It is interesting, is it not, that health authorities and local government may end up picking up the bill?

There is one hope in relation to costs: they may ultimately be the way in which we can defeat ID card bills. I want to ask the Minister—he may intervene on me—to clarify what the Prime Minister meant when he said:

"So you have got a process which you are only at the very beginning of now, but it stands to reason, no government is going to be introducing ID cards if the cost to the public is seen by them as unreasonable."

Is that a promise that if the figures rise, the Government will abandon the scheme, and will the Minister describe what he regards as unreasonable? I regard a scheme that costs £10 billion plus to be an unreasonable scheme.

Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent Central, Labour)

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the cost to the public will include the cost of readers, and that tens of thousands of readers for all the public services will ultimately be involved, if and when the scheme becomes compulsory? Those costs will be very considerable, and while the public may not pay directly, they will pay, because all those authorities will have to increase their charges. The cost to the public will be very high, even if it is not a direct cost.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. My fear is simply this. Now that the Home Secretary has indicated that in Committee he is prepared to consider putting a cap on the charge, he has bound himself to say that he is going to charge only a certain amount. But we know that the Government will have to find the money somewhere, so it will go on to tax generally. People will either pay for it individually or they will pay for it through general taxation. We believe that that is wrong and that the figure is getting too large.

Even if one accepted, first, that the proposals had a purpose, and secondly, that this was the right price to pay, one would still have to make the case that the scheme could work, and that is the point at which we reach the issue of the database. There are two questions about the database. The first is whether it is workable. I am not going to rehearse all the arguments, but we know the figures in relation to Government databases; the success rate is pretty appalling. Despite the Home Office success on passports, the general assumption on Government IT schemes is that they go wrong or over budget, or most likely both.

The second question concerning the database is the crucial issue, which has been touched on by the shadow Home Secretary in particular. The right hon. Gentleman referred to the nervousness that Opposition Members feel about what could happen to that database and about who can access it. We might also fast-forward to what we could be doing with that database in 10 or 15 years' time. Technology already exists to use CCTV cameras to recognise faces in public. It is not beyond the reasonable bounds of possibility that one could link those CCTV cameras with the facial scan and then start to link that into the database. I am concerned about that, and I am not alone. The Information Commissioner has said that he is concerned that each development puts in place another component in the infrastructure of a "surveillance society". He is concerned about the way in which demands will grow for individuals to prove their identity; the broad purposes permit function-creep into unforeseen and perhaps unacceptable areas of private life. We must look carefully at what could be done next with the database, as technology progresses.

Diane Abbott (Hackney North & Stoke Newington, Labour)

On the question of the database, as if the scenario that the hon. Gentleman outlines were not frightening enough, as one of the few Members who has had occasion to see their security file, I have to tell the House that it was full of duff information, and that I find the idea that duff information could be rolled forward in that way even more alarming. The proposal is bad enough if the database is accurate, but if the database contains inaccuracies, it is made much worse.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

I do not want to get into what may be inaccurate, but I certainly agree that the concerns about such misinformation suddenly becoming accessible to so many individuals are troublesome. If such a system were used in the health services in some way and, for example, a woman presented herself to a doctor about a termination, would that information be held on the database? What other organisations could gain access to it?

Andy Burnham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Leigh, Labour)

No, not at all.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

The Minister disagrees from a sedentary position, but he must recognise that there is real concern, particularly when public services are linked to the database, about what can be held and who can gain access to that information.

Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Harborough, Conservative)

The situation is made worse by the fact that this is an enabling Bill—it is devoid of detail—so those questions cannot be answered. I do not think they can even be answered by the Government, who hope that we will shut our eyes to the difficulties that lie ahead and take the Bill on trust. That trust does not exist, either in the House or among the public, and the hon. Gentleman should highlight those concerns further.

Mark Oaten (Shadow Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Home Affairs; Winchester, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right. We are being asked not only to sign a blank cheque for the costs involved, but to sign up to all sorts of function creep that can be added to the proposal.

I want to turn to whether or not the proposal can operate in reality. We have concerns about the database, but our latest concern, which the Government have not addressed during the debate, is whether or not the biometrics will work in the first place. The Government helpfully did their own study, and what did they find? They found that, on face verification, 33 per cent. of faces could not be recognised; on fingerprint verification, 19 per cent. could not be recognised; and, on iris verification, 2 per cent. could not be recognised. [Interruption.] I am not surprised that the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality wants to leave because there are difficult answers to be given.

The failure rates—up to a third on facial scans—imply that a lot more work is needed before the biometrics could be trusted. I am no mathematician, but even if the Government got the failure rate down to 3 or 4 per cent., with a population of 60 million, far too many people could end up being denied services or being hassled because the scheme had not operated properly.

Patrick Hall (Bedford, Labour)

With regard to the efficacy of the iris biometrics, why is the hon. Gentleman ready to dismiss the Cambridge university report alluded to earlier this afternoon? Does he not think it premature to dismiss an examination of the iris recognition immigration system that will be introduced at Heathrow airport? Can we not learn from those initiatives? Is the hon. Gentleman not prepared to keep an open mind