Clause 8 - Issue etc. of ID cards
Identity Cards Bill
9:45 am
Mr David Curry (Skipton and Ripon, Conservative)
Seventy-two per cent. They are all organised into families, and the new chief constable thought, ''We are not spending as much as our family, but we ought to spend the average''. The police authority—not a particularly impressive body—endorsed that, and the result was that 72 per cent. increase. My constituents are still wondering what that has bought; it does not seem to have bought anything significant.
I sit on the Public Accounts Committee. I say straight away that I do not share the general wisdom that that Committee is Parliament at its finest. I think that the National Audit Office is a magnificent body, and I am not always convinced that the Public Accounts Committee adds as much value as people say. However, we get a regular set of cuttings from the National Audit Office, virtually every one of which is about the failure of Government schemes in one shape or form. After all, that is what the National Audit Office is there to investigate.
Everybody here probably listens to the ''Today'' programme, as we are all political junkies, but we are told that most of the population does not. In fact, I understand that none of our target voters does at all, and that is probably true for all three parties. However, we who do will have been listening during the past week to apoplectic GPs' telephone calls in response to the Secretary of State for Health's remarks about the new NHS booking system. One headline reads:
''The doctor won't see you now. He can't. A costly computer system brought in to speed appointments is on the brink of failure.''
There were about 18 cuttings on that costly scheme, which—believe it or not—is more modest than the scheme that we are discussing. Yesterday, the Inland Revenue explained to the Public Accounts Committee that it intended to take one of its IT systems providers to court because of problems from the over-payment or under-payment of people. There was also the famous—legendary—Passport Office scheme, which went wrong. At the end of the day, all such things will impact on the amount of money that the individual will pay for his identity card.