Mr Derek Conway (Old Bexley & Sidcup, Conservative)

Before I give details of the programme motion, I wish to say that, if colleagues want to remove their jackets, that is perfectly acceptable as these Rooms can get warm. Copies of the programme motion agreed by the Programming Sub-Committee this morning are available in the Room. I remind the Committee that the debate on the programme motion may continue for up to half an hour. I call the Minister to move the motion.

Mr Des Browne (Minister of State (Citizenship, Immigration and Counter-Terrorism), Home Office; Kilmarnock & Loudoun, Labour)

I beg to move,

That—

(1) during proceedings on the Identity Cards Bill the Standing Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 18th January) meet—

(a) at 2.30 pm on Tuesday 18th January; and

(b) at 9.25 am and 2.30 pm on Thursday 20th January, Tuesday 25th January and Thursday 27th January;

(2) the proceedings shall be taken in the following order, namely, Clauses 1 to 3, Schedule 1, Clauses 4 to 45, Schedule 2, New Clauses, New Schedules and remaining proceedings on the Bill;

(3) the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.30 pm on Thursday 27th January.

First, I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Conway. I look forward with some confidence to the Committee's deliberations under your fair and even-handed chairmanship and to the possibility that we may welcome both Mr. Hood and Ms Anderson to our proceedings at a later stage. We wish Mr. Hood well and hope that he will be fit enough to assume his proper place in the Chair before we conclude our deliberations.

I also look forward to an informed and constructive debate on this important Bill with all members of the Committee. I know particularly that the hon. Members for Newark (Patrick Mercer) and for Woking (Mr. Malins) and their colleagues on the Opposition Benches will contribute much to the debate as their party supports the principle of an identity card scheme. I hope, although it may turn out to be a forlorn hope, that we can persuade the hon. Members for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) and for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) of the good sense of our proposals. However, I know that I can look forward to the support of and contributions from my hon. Friends.

The motion was drafted in the usual manner, after consultation with the usual channels. It provides for eight sittings and, while arguably that might not be a generous allocation of time, it is sufficient to enable proper scrutiny of the Bill. We are willing to review the   proposed timetable and, if necessary, to add extra time on Tuesday 25 January to the afternoon sitting. That will happen, I hasten to add, if more time is needed because, despite the terms of the motion, it is open to us to sit beyond 5.30 pm. There is no compunction for us to finish at that time. Our principal objective is for progress to be made.

As hon. Members and you, Mr. Conway, will have noted, many amendments have been tabled, principally by the official Opposition. That only one Government amendment has been tabled may be almost unique, if something can be ''almost'' unique. Did someone say, ''It's early days yet.''? In any event, as the Minister with responsibility for the Bill, I am not considering tabling a significant number of amendments; I do not have a large number up my sleeve. I think I can guarantee that the number of amendments tabled by the Government could, at the most, be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Mr Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Woking, Conservative)

That makes a change.

Mr Des Browne (Minister of State (Citizenship, Immigration and Counter-Terrorism), Home Office; Kilmarnock & Loudoun, Labour)

It may well make a change, but I am sure that the Committee would regard it as a welcome change. I have no doubt that arguments will be advanced about timetabling and that a significant number of amendments are justified to probe or explore consequences of different parts of the Bill. Our deliberations might turn out to be repetitious and the number of amendments tabled might not show how often certain issues may need to be debated.

The Bill was published in draft form for consultation in April last year. It was subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, including significant scrutiny by the Home Affairs Committee, which published a report on its views in July. We responded to the report in October and I am pleased to say that we have taken account of many of the Committee's views, which reflect other views expressed during the consultation. The revised version of the Bill has now been introduced to the House. To some degree, the amendment of this legislation has taken place outside the normal legislative process. However, my view is that pre-legislative scrutiny should become a significant part of the legislative process. That would be a welcome development.

For example—this is an issue that we may consider in more detail later this morning—we have clarified the statutory purpose in clause 1 to make it clear that the scheme is, first, to provide individuals with a secure and reliable means of proving their identity. Secondly, it is to enable the identity of UK residents to be ascertained or verified whenever that is necessary or in the public interest.

The Bill received its Second Reading on 20 December and there was broad support for the introduction of identity cards. This is an enabling Bill to set out the framework for the ID card scheme that we propose to introduce, which will start in 2008. Therefore, I remind the Committee that there are practical details of the delivery of the scheme to be determined. Although it is of course legitimate to   explore them in this Committee, some will be settled only once the Bill has been enacted and we are able to move to the procurement phase of the scheme.

For example, I might suggest to members of the Committee that they should not expect me to say exactly what an identity card will look like, but then again the legislation that underpins the issue of driving licences in this country does not set out exactly what a driving licence should look like. It is quite common for such legislation to be drafted in that way. Detail of that sort is normally set out in secondary legislation in due course.

However, in Committee and during the further deliberations that we might have in this House, I undertake, to the extent that I am able, to inform hon. Members of our thinking. This being an enabling Bill, I remind hon. Members that some questions will not be able to be answered until we move to the procurement stage.

Finally, the order of consideration of the Bill is straightforward. It includes taking schedule 1 with clause 3, to which it links. We have not sought to introduce knives and in view of the pre-legislative scrutiny that the Bill has received, I believe that an out-date of 27 January is entirely reasonable.

Mr Patrick Mercer (Shadow Minister (Homeland Security), Home Affairs; Newark, Conservative)

It is a pleasure, as always, to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr. Conway. On behalf of Conservative Members, I start by wishing Mr. Jimmy Hood well. I hope he recovers quickly and, notwithstanding your excellent chairmanship, Mr. Conway, that we have the pleasure of his company in due course, along with that of Ms Anderson.

I also thank the Minister for a gracious introduction to the Bill, which made it clear how much time went into considering the legislation before it reached the Committee. I note all that he said and I am particularly interested in the review of the timetable that has been laid out by the Government. In that regard, I am grateful for the work that the Whips have put in. I am also aware that on Second Reading we reviewed many of the arguments that will, I am sure, come up today and on subsequent days. The Minister's point about the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill is a very fair one.

I note with some interest that, yet again, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam is present. He and I seem to be in such Committees more frequently than we would perhaps care to be, and we have gone through pre-legislative scrutiny and consideration in Committee of a different Bill, so I know how helpful pre-legislative scrutiny is. I am also conscious that a number of amendments have been tabled by Conservative Members and by other parties. I am interested in the fact that the Government appear to have tabled only one.

The Minister's words of caution that this is only an enabling Bill were well put. I hope that we can concentrate on that point. With such a Bill, there will always be a temptation to stray off into the important practicalities, which are probably irrelevancies at this stage. I am grateful to him for the views he expressed.   I hope that we will be able to stick to the point and not wander too far from it, and that we can get through the business before us reasonably expeditiously.

I am also conscious that the Minister has kindly suggested that we might extend the sitting—not only on 25 January, but on other evenings if necessary. I am conscious too that there is a huge amount of business to get through. This Bill is one of the most important that we will debate, not only for the short term, but particularly for the medium to long term. It introduces a fundamental change in how we run security in this country and it has all sorts of implications for civil liberties and how the police and the security services carry out their business.

We cannot underestimate the gravity of the Bill, as we are introducing something that has never been introduced other than in time of war or extreme national emergency. I have no doubt that we will cover the latter issue later. Many would say that we do not face an extreme national emergency at the moment; others that we do. The fact remains that I do not believe that we have the time, under the programme motion, to consider the amendments in the detail that they deserve.

I am grateful to the Minister for what he said in his introduction, but I fear that we must oppose the programme motion. We need more time to get through the amendments.

Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)

We join the Conservatives in opposing the programme motion as we also feel that there is insufficient time for the Committee to discuss the Bill.

We firmly support pre-legislative scrutiny. The opinion polls have largely considered the principles of ID cards, rather than the detail of whether they are workable. In this Committee, we should go into far more detail and test the Minister on whether the legislation will produce the benefits assigned to it and whether those can be achieved within the cost framework set out for implementation. All that is critical.

The Liberal Democrats oppose this legislation as we do not believe that the Government are putting forward the right tool for the job. We do not believe that a decision to go forward with this proposal would pass a cost-benefit analysis if it were compared with a decision to spend the equivalent amount of money on other forms of law enforcement or other social or public benefits. We require a significant period to discuss such things.

Mr Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)

I am already slightly confused by the Liberal Democrats and I am sure I will be again during our examination of the Bill. The hon. Gentleman seems to imply that he is worried about the Bill not being workable, but previous statements by Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament have opposed the Bill in principle. Will he clarify that?

Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)

The two are necessarily related. In talking about the cost-benefit analysis, we deal on the one hand with cash terms and on the other with a very   complex equation. We want to explore precisely such issues, which is why we want more time. On one side of that equation, there might be the benefit from the prevention of deaths in a terrorist incident; on the other, there might be the cost—the harm—of potential invasions of privacy. One could describe all those issues as relating to a cost-benefit analysis. All are issues of principle in that we assign a particular value to personal privacy that may differ from that of others. We need more than four days of debate to consider such complex issues.

By the time we get to Third Reading, we hope to have persuaded those on the Conservative Benches to join us in opposing the legislation. Many did, very sensibly, on Second Reading while others chose to stay away so as not to have to support something that they believe will be problematic.

An enormous number of measures under the Bill will leave things to the discretion of the Secretary of State, who could alter them. All those need testing. There is a paucity of detail. We do not have sufficiently detailed costings, nor a sufficient understanding of what the orders that will implement the Bill will look like. Such issues are critical to the citizens out there. No system on this scale has ever been developed anywhere else in the world.

The Home Office itself has commissioned a wonderful piece of work entitled ''Feasibility Study on the Use of Biometrics in Entitlement Schemes''. That is the kind of detail that we need to go into in Committee, although I fear that we will not have the time to do so.

We believe that the ID card proposals are a sledgehammer to crack a nut: they might succeed in opening the nut, but anyone who has tried to eat a nut that has been opened with a sledgehammer will know that it is not an attractive proposition. The Government have proposed a scheme that is simply overkill for the purpose that they are trying to achieve, and they have given us insufficient time to explore it. They have proposed a gimmick that they want to bang through before the general election. We cannot support a programme motion that is part of such a Government strategy.

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

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Conway; it is a pleasure to serve under you. I look forward to debates with the Minister, with whom I recently had constructive discussions on another matter.

The official Opposition support the Bill, but that is not to say that we will not have vigorous debates about, and even disagree to, parts of it, and that is why I oppose the programme motion. This is a very important Bill. The Government are taking huge powers against the individual. I am also serving next door on the Standing Committee on the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill. Through just those two measures, the amount of power that the state is taking over the individual is unprecedented. This country lived through the whole IRA crisis and did not   take the sort of powers that are to be taken under this Bill and the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill, and that is a serious matter.

I am not getting at the Minister, but the legislation should not be rammed through Committee in only eight sittings. It should be considered properly and at proper length, and there should be proper time for everybody to consider it and to propose proper amendments to it in light of our debate. That is why Parliament, in the old days, did not have timetables. There was time between one sitting and the next for everyone to consider what had been said and to table amendments, without things being rushed through.

I understand that the Bill has been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, and that is very good. All legislation that comes before this House should, as a matter of course, be subject to such scrutiny. Also, it is to be welcomed that, as the Minister said, only one Government amendment has been tabled—so far, I add in parentheses, because I have a very large wager with the Minister that by the time we finish this Committee there will have been many more. The Minister would need the clarity of thought of Einstein to devise a Bill so perfect that it did not need any amendment whatever. Although I ascribe great virtues to the Minister, and pay him tribute, the clarity of thought and intellectual ability of Einstein has not quite yet been bestowed on him. I am sure that there will be some more amendments.

The Bill will be scrutinised not only in Committee; it will be well scrutinised in another place. The problem is that the less scrutiny we give it in this place, the more will be necessary in the other place, and I suspect that that will be the case for the Bill. It would be far better if it were scrutinised properly in this House, so that their lordships had a second bite at what we had managed to achieve, rather than dealing with what we had not managed to achieve. [Interruption.] I can tell that Labour Members will continue to interrupt Opposition Members.

Through the usual channels, I managed to ensure the pleasure of the company of my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry), who happens to take an opposite view to that of my party. Through the same mechanism, we made strong recommendations that the Government have on their side both those in favour of and those against the Bill, so that we could represent the true feelings of those on both sides of the House. I am delighted to see my right hon. Friend here today; I hope that we will have the pleasure of the presence of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) at some stage, but perhaps she has been so silenced, so squeezed-out, and made so unwelcome that she will not be here. We look forward to her presence.

Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)

To clarify, I bumped into the hon. Member for Vauxhall yesterday and she told me that she was looking forward to serving on the Committee but because she had not expected to be picked she had been unable to clear her diary for today. I think she will attend later.  

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

I am pleased to hear that. I thought that some nasty incident had befallen the hon. Lady so that she could not attend the Committee. I am glad that she is alive and well and will be attending some Committee proceedings.

I am delighted that the Government are prepared to be flexible on time, even though they have not given us more than eight sessions. My right hon. Friend and I are probably the only Committee members who remember Standing Committees sitting through the night—and my hon. Friend the Member for Woking remembers that, too. It used to be the custom for the usual channels to buy Members of their party champagne and smoked salmon if a Committee sat through the night, and I would be delighted to do that if we sat through the night, but I suspect that the Government would vigorously reject such a proposal.

We do not have enough time to scrutinise what is a very important Bill. I hope that the Government will be flexible not only about the hours the Committee sits, but about giving us extra sittings if we run into difficulties.

Mr David Curry (Skipton & Ripon, Conservative)

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) said, I voted against the Bill on Second Reading, and I was concerned about the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark that we should concentrate on the generalities of the legislation and that it was legitimate for the Minister to say that all the detail would come later. If we end up with a fully fledged, all-singing, all-dancing compulsory universal identity card system in Britain, this will be the only piece of primary legislation on which it depends; all will flow back to this one piece of legislation. No matter what pieces of secondary legislation and resolutions in both Houses are prescribed, that will not permit the same sort of scrutiny that a Standing Committee conducts with regard to primary legislation.

I want to know precisely and in detail what the Minister intends and how this legislation will work. I have lived in a number of countries that have identity cards, and what is crucial is how they work in practice—how the authorities and the police behave, what the requirements are on people with regard to producing a card, and what sort of information goes on the card. All of that is at the heart of this legislation, and if we do not explore it in this Committee, it will not be explored.

I hope that the issue of principle has been decided, because that should have been addressed in the debate on Second Reading. There has been pre-legislative scrutiny, but we are now getting down to the nitty-gritty. We are studying a piece of legislation that will fundamentally change the deportment of us as citizens and the relationship between the citizen and the Government. I hope that we will not allow it merely to pass by under the guise that we are talking about generalities, because the detail of it is everything.

Mr Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)

I rise to support the programme motion. I enjoyed many happy months serving with the Minister on the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee,   so I got to know him very well before he was elevated to his current position; in his defence, I want to make it clear that Einstein would not have been fit to tie his bootlaces, either intellectually or physically.

It comes as no surprise to Labour Committee members that the Conservative party should object to the programme motion, given that when this particular measure passed through the excellent pre-legislative scrutiny process, the position of Conservative Members could be described as one of complete confusion. I have sympathy with them. There have been spectacular U-turns on an issue of fundamental importance very late in the day, and I understand why they would want a lot more time to consider what the eventual position of their party is likely to be. I do not think they know that themselves. However, we cannot restrict and determine timetables for the examination of legislation in this place purely because the official Opposition are a complete and utter shambles on this issue.

I like to call the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam my hon. Friend because I hold him in great affection and I think that it is a great shame that he will be leaving this place. However, while there is some confusion on the Opposition Benches, there is a greater confusion in the approach from the Liberal Democrat party. They are going to confuse principle with the implementation of this Bill. With the general election approaching, the hon. Gentleman may well come to regret that he has described as ''a nut'' such important issues as measures to clamp down on terrorism and identity fraud, and to enable the security services and the Government to combat more effectively those who seek to deal in illegal immigration or benefit fraud.

Mr Derek Conway (Old Bexley & Sidcup, Conservative)

Order. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is going to address the programme motion and not the principle of the Bill.

Mr Martin Salter (Reading West, Labour)

The principle of the Bill is far more than simply a nut. To describe these issues as ''a nut'' and this measure as ''a sledgehammer'' is, I suggest, a political error. In examining this measure in the time available to us, those arguments will become crystal clear.

Mr Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Woking, Conservative)

May I add my own warm welcome to you, Mr. Conway, as Chairman of the Committee? I have no doubt that you will conduct our business with fairness, courtesy and efficiency, spiced with a sense of humour. I also thank the Minister for being so co-operative and helpful to Conservative Members in recent weeks, not least by making experts from the Home Office available to talk us through certain aspects of the Bill. That help has been available to us all, and we appreciate it.

The Bill is very important, and I share my colleagues' doubt about whether the programme will give us sufficient time to debate it. The Bill did have pre-legislative scrutiny—the Home Affairs Committee did a lot of work and there was public consultation. Yet, as has been said earlier, much of that focus was on the actual identity card, rather than on the genus of the Bill, which is a national identity scheme requiring   individuals to supply information to the authority, under penalty if they fail to do so. I hope that on Report, when the Bill comes back to the Commons, more time will be made available to debate it. I share the interest of my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold in the prospect of all-night sittings, though my own bet with him would be nothing to do with smoked salmon and champagne—it is more likely to be gin and a Cornish pasty. In any event, we shall wait and see. Many of us recall going through nights on Bills in the past, and this Bill deserves serious scrutiny.

I believe that the Joint Committee on Human Rights is currently meeting, and is likely to report back in a few weeks' time. I had meant to propose that our own Committee be adjourned for six weeks so that we could work more closely with it. I do not press the proposition, but I leave the thought with the Minister. I am sure that we shall debate these matters in a friendly and constructive way, and I thank the Minister for his courtesy so far. He will however understand that his sensible comment that the time given to us is not generous requires us, on this occasion, to vote against the programme motion.

Question put:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 11, Noes 5.

Mr Derek Conway (Old Bexley & Sidcup, Conservative)

I remind the Committee that there is a money resolution and a Ways and Means resolution in connection with this Bill. Copies of the resolution are available in the Room. I also remind hon. Members that adequate notice should be given of amendments. As a general rule, my co-Chairmen and   I do not intend to call starred amendments, but our excellent Clerk and adviser, Mr. Lee, is always readily available to advise members of the Committee. Please ensure that mobile phones and pagers are either off or on silent during the Committee.