Clause 5 - Applications relating to entries in Register
Identity Cards Bill
11:15 am
Mr Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Woking, Conservative)
The continued support of the official Opposition will, inevitably, depend on meeting the five tests put forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden on Second Reading. Before long, we will get to the issue of whether the money spent on the scheme could be better spent elsewhere. However, the Minister's intervention was helpful, and this has been a good debate so far.
I move on briefly to the issue of technology, and the question of whether the Government can achieve what they want. All Governments are the same, in the sense that they are not necessarily bodies to whom I would trust a great deal, in terms of handling aspects of my life or anything with which I am connected. But that is the nature of Governments. The hon. Member for Reading, West suggested that I was being inflammatory; I hope not, as that is not my style. I do not want to be inflammatory now when I say that this Government have failed to implement successfully practically every large IT system that they have tried to implement. That has resulted in a loss to the public of many, many billions of pounds in the past few years.
The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside himself said that
''it is important to recognise the past failures of Government technology systems''.—[Official Report, 3 July 2002; Vol. 388, c. 231.]
One has only to look at the Child Support Agency, the UK Passport Service, the Inland Revenue, National Air Traffic Services and the Criminal Records Bureau to see that the list goes on and on. Whatever Government are in place, it is never surprising to anyone on either side of the House when they read something that says: ''System Crashes, Chaos Results''. We think, ''My Goodness, another shambles!'' That is an entirely non-party political point. Every expensive project, in my experience, promises to deliver better and cheaper services to the public but inevitably fails to do so.
I ask the Minister to be as open with us as he can be on the issue of the companies and bodies that will be involved in the project. [Interruption.] I see hon. Members holding their papers. It is either because they have absolutely had enough of me or because time is moving on.
Someone somewhere has to administer the scheme. There may be considerations of commercial sensitivity that we need to discuss more privately, but I have read in an official report made to me that a company called—
It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.