Identity Documents Bill

Public Bill Committee, 1 July 2010.

Clause 1

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I welcome particularly all new hon. Members to the Committee. I am sure that they will find it a life-enhancing experience. Clause 1 is the heart of the Bill. It repeals the Identity Cards Act 2006 with certain limited exceptions, so we shall have to resist repeating the speeches that were made on Second Reading. It would be tempting to go down that route, but it would be out of order. I shall resist the temptation. We are delighted that the new coalition Government were able to introduce the measure as our first new Bill in this Parliament.

On Second Reading, the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), made an extremely interesting and lively speech, and described the Bill as expensive, misguided and spiteful. He was wrong on all those points. The clause clearly demonstrates our commitment to remove the identity card scheme from the statute book because it was—and, until the Bill is enacted, is—an expensive and misguided scheme. Despite its obvious lack of popularity and demand with the public, it was pursued wrong-headedly by the previous Government. The scheme could carry on by gathering volumes of biographical and biometric data from people and charging them for the privilege of doing so, as we discovered in our evidence sessions. However, not all of them were charged as we now know because several thousand of the small number of people who apparently signed up for ID cards did so only because the Government were paying for them. Having done that, the Government levied financial penalties of up to £1,000 if those people failed to keep their personal data up to date. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch is looking surprised at that assertion, but she heard the evidence from Manchester airport.

The 2006 Act clearly symbolised the previous Government’s aim of extending the boundaries of the state into the private lives of the citizen. Obviously, there are situations when public protection, national security and the prevention of serious and organised crime require that information is gathered, analysed and disseminated, but that must be a proportionate response to the level of risk or threat posed. Our objection to the ID scheme was that it was wholly disproportionate, and ludicrously expensive and intrusive for the various virtues that were prayed in its aid by Ministers in the previous Government.

The criterion for holding such a large volume of personal biometric and biographical data on ID cards was based on the fact that they had paid £30 for a card or, had indeed had that £30 paid by the taxpayer. We cannot expect the public to play the full and active role that they need to do and should do in making our streets safer and our communities better places in which to live when the Government continue to gather a whole host of factors about them and their whereabouts on the remote off chance that, in the distant future, it might be of some benefit to public authorities. That is not the way in which to create responsible citizens; it is to treat all citizens of this country as potential suspects. It is wrong in principle and hugely expensive in practice.

Far from being a spiteful Bill, as the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle described it, it is a common-sense Bill. The clause takes a major step in removing the intrusion of the state, enhancing the liberty of the individual and removing a costly and expensive scheme that has been, and will continue to be, funded by the taxpayer. Whether the scheme is self-financing is irrelevant because people would be paying for it. Whether taxpayers or cardholders, they are the same people. The distinction that the previous Government tried to draw between the Government paying or the citizen paying was wholly bogus, because either way the citizen would have to pay. It was an act of audacity to require innocent people to pay £30 for the dubious privilege of allowing the state to build a national identity register, including several dozen of their personal details, and then threaten them with a £1,000 fine if they got any of those details wrong or forgot to update them. In all the consultations, debates and discussions on ID cards since 2001, we were promised benefits and savings, but the reality was that none materialised, with no imminent prospect that they would.

In our useful evidence sessions on Tuesday, I found it particularly instructive that Angela Epstein, a huge enthusiast for the ID card scheme and a witness selected by the Opposition to pray in aid the virtues of the scheme, admitted that she had not found a single use for the card in the seven months that she had owned one. If the enthusiasts of the scheme could not find a use for it, why on earth did the previous Government think that the British public as a whole would? The scheme was unpopular, intrusive and indiscriminate, bringing expense and confusion.

On that basis and without anticipating the will of the House or of another place, we have taken steps to ensure that future spending by the taxpayer and fee-paying by individual citizens is at an absolute minimum pending parliamentary consideration of the Bill. We shall of course meet our statutory obligations, but we are deferring consideration of any further identity card applications until Parliament has determined the future of the Bill. Such a practical and common-sense approach cuts the cost to the taxpayer and prevents individuals from spending the £30.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

To clarify, by “deferring”, does the Minister mean that the Government are keeping an open mind on future identity card possibilities, or are they committed to their manifesto pledge to abolish the card?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

The hon. Gentleman is, I am sure, mischievously misinterpreting what he just heard. No, there is absolutely no intention for the Government ever to return to anything like an ID card project. We are absolutely sticking to our manifesto commitment. I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman is, as ever, completely awake.

That practical and common-sense approach cuts the cost to the taxpayer and prevents individuals from spending £30 on a project that has little in the way of benefit and, potentially, a short shelf-life.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

Does the Minister agree that it is unfair that those who paid £30 in good faith for an ID card will not be entitled to a refund?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I do not. I have heard the hon. Lady and others make that point. Frankly, it could not have been clearer in recent months, in the months leading up to the general election, that if the previous Government lost that election the identity card scheme would be scrapped. That was a commitment by the Conservative party for years, and it was a commitment by our partners in the coalition, the Liberal Democrats. The British people elected the Government who are now doing what we said we would do, so no one can complain that they did not see that coming and that it is unexpected.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

The Minister referred earlier to the number of cards issued to those working at Manchester airport. Can he give us the number of those who paid £30 themselves for the card, not just of those who were part of the pilot scheme?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

Presumably the number is somewhere between the 2,600 or so that were given away for free and the roughly 15,000 total. Do the maths—about 12,400 paid. I thought that the Angela Epstein remark to which I referred was interesting: she, a great enthusiast for the scheme, had not found a single use for the card. I suggest that if the hon. Lady had bought a consumer gadget last December for £30 and had not found a single use for it by June of this year, she might have just shrugged her shoulders and said, “That was a bad buy. That was a shame. That was a waste of £30,” which, I suggest, is the attitude of any sensible person to the identity card.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), the former shadow Home Secretary, said specifically before identity cards were issued that anyone who spent £30 on one would be buying a souvenir of a failed Labour Government. That is what the cards now are.

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

Is the Minister’s case that the general public should have known that the Tories and Lib Dems would be elected at the last general election?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

That would clearly have been a sensible assumption to make, since it proved to the case. Frankly, observing the death throes of the previous Labour Government, it was not out of court for people to assume that that would happen. People took a risk and thought that the scheme would survive if the Labour Government survived, but they did not, and neither will the scheme survive—that is what happens.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

In assessing the value of ID cards, the Minister has not mentioned the intangible benefit of security, on which it is difficult to put a price. He referred to Angela Epstein not being able to give an example of an ID card being used in a practical way, but one of the biggest growth areas of white collar crime is fraud, particularly ID fraud. Surely, ID cards are one method of addressing that problem.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

Fraud is clearly a problem, but the key is proportionality, as I have said. Banks and financial institutions—indeed, Governments—can take steps to prevent fraud, but each scheme has to be assessed on whether it is proportionate and effective. All along, our case has been that the ID card scheme is by no means the most effective way of fighting fraud; it is certainly the most colossally expensive way of doing so. Apart from all that, such a scheme is hugely intrusive on the private lives of every adult citizen of the country. The scheme therefore completely fails any test of proportionality.

The so-called benefits that were listed in various forms for the scheme proved to be unfounded. The hon. Gentleman was not in the House to follow the debates closely, but I assure him that about every six months a new benefit was adduced, when it became clear that the benefit previously claimed for it would not become a reality. I do not agree with him that the scheme is an effective way of fighting fraud.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton.

The Government have said that the Bill is symbolic. I would counter that it is also ill thought out. Things that are done in a symbolic fashion, without attention to detail, often have perverse outcomes. Her Majesty’s Opposition recognise the outcome of the general election, the formation of the coalition Government and the clear will of the two parties involved to repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006. However, as we progress through the Bill and towards the possible abolition of ID cards, it is important that the Opposition point out some of the real pitfalls and security gaps that will result. The Minister is new in post and the first legislation proposed by the Government is to repeal the 2006 Act, but the Home Office should bear strongly in mind its core responsibility: the protection of the public. The Bill will reduce protection for the public—in a sense, the Government are throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

There is still uncertainty over the future of fingerprints in passports, despite reports of spies using false British passports in America and the earlier alleged problems with Mossad, when the current Foreign Secretary raised concerns about the security of the British passport. Although it is pertinent to the Bill, we have no idea about future proposals for the security of passports. Those matters are connected because the database established under the 2006 Act would have covered fingerprints used in the passports that would have been introduced two years later. To have secure documents, it is important to have a database to back them up. That is not new. As the Minister is also responsible for passports, I hope that he will visit the passport archives, which for many years have kept records of passports and of the deaths of passport holders. Such records are important for all sorts of reasons, including proving citizenship.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

On security and maintaining the integrity of the UK’s borders, is it not the case that one of the 9/11 bombers had 30 separate identities and that a form of biometric identity card would be an effective check to prevent such an event happening in the future?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Perhaps the Minister is not fully apprised of this yet, but if he talks to his officials at the Home Office and to experts in the field of identity fraud, he will know that it is a real issue, because criminals seek to have multiple identities to carry out their business. They do that not only to pretend that they are someone else, but often to get bank accounts, money and other assets under other names, and fraudulent documents are what they often use.

One of the key benefits of a having a fingerprint to attach an individual closely to their identity is that opportunities for fraud are reduced. The passport is always being improved and enhanced for security reasons, and it has changed even in the last 10 years. The identity card is essentially part of the same process. However, passports are not on a statutory footing, and it was not necessary to introduce a Bill in 2006 to make some of those enhancements.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the new Government having halted the introduction of biometrics, such as fingerprinting, into passports, and the risk that it may cause to our security?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is a serious question for the Government. We heard this week of what happened in America with a British passport, and it is important that we have an answer from the Minister today about those plans. It is not enough to say that the Government are halting something; the Minister needs to reassure the British public about the integrity of their passports now and in the future.

Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow)

What I do not understand is, if the scheme was voluntary—as it was meant to be—why is its removal a threat to national security? If a terrorist comes here, he is hardly likely to take up a voluntary ID card. Biometric cards are not foolproof either; problems of fraud exist with them, too.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The hon. Gentleman raises an important question, and it is important that we nail this one. Eight out of 10 British citizens currently have a passport—I am sure that the Minister can give an up-to-date figure as he has the support to do so. Those passports are voluntary, and the more secure that document is, the better it is for its holder, and it is similar for ID cards. The two schemes are intertwined, because to have a fingerprint on the card requires a database secure enough to hold that information so that it cannot be downloaded, looked up or taken by anyone else, and that database was necessary to enhance the security of the British passport.

I am pleased to see that new hon. Members are interested and I hope that they think deeply about what the Bill will mean to the British public. My contention is that if we do not have fingerprints in passports, or a secure database to back them up, we risk the security of that document—we have already seen its breach on a couple of occasions in the past six months. We want to ensure that the passport retains its strength and security.

Mr Aidan Burley (Cannock Chase) (Con) rose—

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I just want to make a little progress.

The Minister has talked about the lack of popularity in the ID card scheme. I contend that that is not the case, because the most recent figures that I have seen indicate that, at any point, between 58% and 62% of the British public were in favour of ID cards, and I will be glad if he gives the most recent figure from Home Office polling. It is one of those things where if people are against it, they are fully against it. However, although the people to whom I have spoken up and down the country were ambivalent beforehand, they were much in favour of the scheme after learning about it.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I assure the hon. Lady that the Home Office is not wasting taxpayers’ money on polling the popularity of an identity card that was rejected by the British people at a general election eight weeks ago.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The Minister is being flippant with the opinions of the British public. The Home Office, as he will know from his role as shadow Minister, regularly polls the public on other things. All I am asking is what the latest figure is—it will, clearly, be from before the election—and it is important that the Committee hears that while it is deliberating the repeal of an important Act of Parliament from 2006, which was being implemented.

Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham)

May we go back to the question that was put to the hon. Lady, which asked why any terrorist would sign up to a voluntary scheme? That is the nub of the case.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

No one ever said that terrorists would all sign up to the scheme. [ Laughter. ] Hon. Gentlemen may find that funny, but there is a serious point. The harder it is for somebody to get a document—a false document, or a real document in a false name—the harder it is for them to carry out their business of damaging this country. It is a core responsibility of the Home Office to protect the public from that. Just as chip and pin bank cards radically reduced fraud in banking and just as regulations helped tackle money laundering issues with solicitors and banks, the identity card would have been a simple proof of identity, when many private businesses—particularly banks—require high levels of proof of identity.

Gordon Henderson (Conservative, Sittingbourne and Sheppey)

We are talking about terrorism, but is it not true that all the terrorist acts that have been carried out in this country have been undertaken by British citizens?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I would be delighted if the Government came up with a total solution for terrorism. The previous Government never said that they had a total solution—if only any Government had that power. The point is that the Home Office’s responsibility is to do all in its power, within reasonable means, to ensure the security of the British public. My contention is that having the opportunity to secure people’s data and identity absolutely was an important aspect of that, not only for security, but for general convenience. Many of us have constituents who have had their identity stolen, and have seen the challenges and the hassle that they had to go through. Those are the very people who were keen to see identity cards introduced, because it would have incontrovertibly linked them to their identity.

Mr Burley rose—

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

If I may, I will make a little progress. I am more than a little surprised at the Minister’s comments about the airport scheme. His lack of preparation and knowledge about a scheme—it was not a revelation, because it was widely reported in the press and was reported to Parliament—simply reflects that he has not done his homework. I have some sympathy with new Members who are surprised by that—although research and homework are important in this place—but for the Minister to suggest that he found that scheme a revelation is a little odd.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

While the hon. Lady is trying to be personally offensive, may I make it clear that I said that I thought that the British people would find it a revelation?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

It was in the newspapers.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

It was not particularly well reported, but it is noteworthy that in an attempt to prop up this failing scheme, which she was trying to foist on the British people, she was prepared to waste hundreds of thousands of pounds more of taxpayers’ money in a desperate attempt to give identity cards away for free. In retrospect, what is interesting is that the Government could not even give them away.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

It is easy for the Minister to make cheap debating points and have a laugh about these things, but he is partly responsible for security in this country. This scheme, and its exact make-up, was at least as widely reported—probably more so—than this Government’s apparent policy to get rid of identity cards.

A few weeks before the election, the Minister and I went to a debate with students at a London university, and I think that there were 30 people in the room—the Minister may remember it better than me. That was the first time that I had heard him say that his view was that there should be an absolute repeal of identity cards. It was his view, so I was not entirely sure whether it was a wider view across his party, because I had not heard it quite so categorically from anyone else. The British public could be forgiven for not having heard that message. Although the Minister may have said those words, and he may have said them to his hon. Friends on the Back Benches, that does not mean that every person purchasing a card would have had any understanding or belief that this Bill would have gone through. Most people have a reasonable expectation that a £30 purchase would lead to the actual product being theirs.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

Does my hon. Friend share my surprise to hear that the Government have no figure for those who paid £30 for those cards, and does she find it unfair that as a consequence they have been unable to do any assessment of what the cost of reimbursing those people would be? [ Interruption. ] I am a little surprised by the dissent on that point. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for the Government to say to people who bought a card in good faith, “I’m afraid that we are not going to refund you.”?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I am greatly disappointed with that, and we will be touching on that issue in an amendment that we have tabled. People paid £30 to receive an identity card, which is a simple transaction, but we do not know the precise number who did so. Will the Minister tell us the number of people who paid £30 for a card?

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

No, I want to finish my point.

I also want the Minister to detail the cost of sending two letters to every card holder, because there may not be much difference between the cost of sending those two letters and providing a refund, which would be relatively simple to do, or at least providing some form of credit. The Bill is meanly worded—perhaps the draftsman should be congratulated on drafting Government policy with such zealous enthusiasm—but there is no money resolution, so it is impossible for us to table an amendment providing a £30 refund. Obtaining a refund is clearly the will of those who paid for an ID card, which are now being scrapped, and I hope that the Minister has a change of heart.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

Although there is debate about the precise number of people who obtained an identity card, either paid for or free, does the hon. Lady accept that the popularity of the scheme is shown by the fact that, even though thousands were given away for free, only 15,000 people obtained one?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I have been put in the position of having to educate hon. Members, but I will indulge the hon. Gentleman. The scheme was launched in autumn last year, and it was only marketed and developed in two cities, Manchester and, latterly, London. Such schemes are never taken up by everybody over night. Passports are a 10-year document, so people do not buy or renew them every time that they are redesigned. It is important to recognise that there would have been greater take-up if the scheme had run for longer. The shame of the Bill is that it is strangling at birth something that, had it run for longer, might have proved, even to Her Majesty’s Government, that there was value in all or part of the scheme. Rather than waiting to see whether there was any value in the scheme, the Government are strangling it at birth.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

On costs, reimbursement, equity and fairness, are the Government establishing the principle that compensation will be paid to large corporations affected by Government policy, but not to individuals? On that basis, is it reasonable to assume that if, for example, a Government, of any persuasion, decided to nationalise an industry, compensation would not be paid? That is a fundamental point.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I share my hon. Friend’s sadness. It seems that big corporations will be compensated, but the little man in Easington, the little woman in Hackney and the Manchester resident will not get their money back. Perhaps that is a symbol of who the Government feel that they represent, or perhaps the Minister will reconsider. Will the Minister specifically tell us the Government’s plans for compensating the companies that provided the infrastructure for the scheme? I have been told in a written answer that discussions are ongoing, but will the Minister commit to letting me know when those discussions are complete and what figure has been decided for compensation? The British public need to know the total cost of abolishing the scheme. The Government are trying to do that on the cheap by not giving people who paid for the cards their £30 back, but, interestingly, they are not refusing to compensate big businesses. Perhaps that is because those businesses may, quite rightly, have recourse to law and may be able to take strong action against the Government, whereas a resident in Easington or in Bolton might not have the wherewithal to take the Government to court in order to reclaim their money.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

I am intrigued to hear the hon. Lady raising the question of the cost of the scheme, but will she remind us how much money the previous Government wasted on the scheme for only 15,000 people to take it up? Is she aware that during the nine months for which the scheme was running, about 2 million passports were issued, which is slightly more than 15,000 identity cards?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The hon. Gentleman might have come a little better prepared. He professes to be interested and an expert on this matter, but he is fundamentally wrong on both those points. More passports were issued, because they were available to everyone in the country. Identity cards were available to only a limited number of people resident in a limited number of postcode areas, which clearly made a difference. In addition, the public always had a choice, and some people may have chosen to have only an identity card or a passport, while others would have chosen both. The key point, which he should be aware of, is that the scales were massively different.

The hon. Gentleman’s point about cost is also a red herring. The scheme was the most openly reported to Parliament of any Government project ever. The Government of the day reported to Parliament every six months with a projected 10-year cost for the scheme. That was only the cost; the fees that would be coming in were not taken into account. Under the rules of the Treasury, identity cards and passports must pay for themselves—the money received in fees must cover the outgoings. Clearly, there were set-up costs involved in developing the infrastructure; in the same way, however, the first Mini off the production line would have cost some thousands or millions of pounds, whereas the 500th or the 5,000th would have been much cheaper as a result of economies of scale. I am sure that I do not need to lecture him on economics—he is an academic and I am sure that he is clever enough to work that out for himself. Let us remove that red herring—someone who paid their £30 received an ID card; someone who did not pay did not receive one. I think that if people paid £30 for a card that is now being scrapped, they should get that £30 back.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

On costs and cost-benefits, what price national security? It is the first duty of a responsible Government to protect the citizens of this land. As for the suggestions that there are no cost-benefits, and the mutterings about the difficulties of quantifying them, if a biometric identity card deters a terrorist attack, its value is extraordinary.

Aidan Burley (Conservative, Cannock Chase)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

I am making an intervention, so I do not think that I can.

A number of my constituents are employed at the passport office at Millburngate in Durham city, and they stand to lose their jobs as a result of this decision by the Con-Dem coalition Government. Has that been factored in to the cost-benefit analysis?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

If somebody tries to intervene in an intervention, that gives us a clue about its length. Can we keep interventions a little briefer?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

As if by magic, my hon. Friend has led me to my next topic. Having discussed recompense to the individual, I want the Minister to tell me today how many temporary and permanent jobs have so far been lost from the Identity and Passport Service since his Government came to power. Will he be candid about the plans for the future of those jobs, and how many he expects will be lost, given that we are in difficult financial times? Will he also tell us whether the costs that relate directly to those people who were issuing identity cards have been factored in? I believe that removing the scheme in such a fashion will cost the taxpayer dear at a time when we ought to be saving money.

The Minister mentioned one of the witnesses from Tuesday’s oral evidence session saying that she had not had the opportunity to use her identity card. We pay £77.50 for a passport. I do not know how many of us use it daily; we might not use it for six months at a time, depending on our lifestyle and what we need to prove. Not using something does not indicate that people do not want or value it; they have the security of knowing that it is there when it is needed. The identity card was very convenient for some people and it was a very secure form of documentation, which is why it was quite popular among young people and those who need to prove young people’s age and identity regularly.

The Government seem to be keen on databases if they are freelance and private, but not if they are held by them, which is curious, because the Minister seems to believe that the Government are less capable of protecting secure data than Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Iceland. I find that a little surprising. We all provide data to a lot of different organisations. I would rather that the Government held it than a lot of random private companies, and that legal recompense and security measures were in place if there were any problems.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

In the Government’s impact assessment on scrapping identity cards and the national identity register, I read that

“a possible maximum of £0.4M in reclaimed card fees”

would be paid by the Government at the taxpayer’s expense, if they were to return the fees. Given that the Government do not know how many people voluntarily paid £30 for a card, does my hon. Friend share my surprise that any figure has been arrived at?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I certainly do. The Government are muddled, and it behoves the Minister to come clean with us and give us the figures for the number of people who have a card and will not be recompensed.

I have asked questions about the number of people applying for cards who were in the system, and I have been told that that information is impossible to obtain. I asked the question again, in case, in the meantime, a miraculous way had been discovered to find out how many people had rung the Identity and Passport Service to request a form, because I cannot believe that the figure is not available. It is important to understand that although the number of applicants may be small, those people have a right to receive from the Government what they paid for. We have consumer protection law, and the Government are running roughshod over it, as they are over many other matters.

I want to touch on a couple more points before I conclude my comments on what we will lose if the Bill is enacted. There is still wriggle room for the Minister to do what the Government want—to get rid of identity cards—without throwing out the baby with the bath water, and ensuring that the British public are protected.

Will the Minister clarify the Government’s plans to introduce fingerprints on passports? We risk having British people become second-class citizens in the world, if the British passport does not keep pace with modern technology, and we risk their having to pay lots of money for visas to visit countries where their passports no longer meet security requirements. We have international agreements on that, and it is important to ensure not only that we catch up with the rest of the world, but that we are ahead of the curve. This country has a proud tradition on passport security, but recently we have had some worrying incidents. The Minister needs to answer the British public’s concerns about that.

I want the Minister to clarify what halting the second generation means. I also want to know whether a review is taking place, if so what it is covering, whether it will report to Parliament in due course and whether there is an approximate timetable. I appreciate that autumn in the civil service can stretch to nearly Christmas, but we would like a timetable, because that information is important to the public. If I were about to renew my passport, I would want to know what was happening in the future and whether it was worth hanging on for a month or two to obtain the more secure passport that the Minister will deliver, no doubt, when he sees the light.

It is important for the Minister to outline his vision and view about the use of fingerprints and other biometric data in future. Is he fundamentally opposed to the principle of having people’s fingerprints collected? If he is not, will he tell us what plans the Government have to hold that data securely, if they get rid of the identity database? The Government must clarify the muddle. I believe that the Minister is in favour of fingerprints for visas out of country and for the identity cards of foreign nationals that prove their resident status in this country. If that applies to foreign nationals, why should it not apply to British citizens who choose to go down that route? Overall, there is a muddle about security.

It is mean-spirited not to refund people’s £30, and it is mean-spirited not even to allow us to attempt to amend the Bill to ask for that. We are asking the Minister, but we cannot table an amendment.

Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham)

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

No. We are seeing a symbolic gesture rushed through without regard to those very serious points, to which I hope that the Minister will respond so that the British public know exactly where they stand.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I see that although I took a self-denying ordinance not to make a Second Reading speech, that did not necessarily cross the Floor.

In that parade of synthetic indignation, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch raised some serious points, and I will deal with the most serious, which is passport security. We remain confident that the British passport is one of the most secure documents of its kind and, to address her final point directly, it fully meets rigorous international standards. As she is aware, passports issued by the British Government since 2006 are biometrically linked to an individual through an electronic chip, which contains their photograph. The chip cannot be altered without border control officers becoming aware that the passport has been tampered with. The previous Government introduced that initiative, which we welcomed at the time. I am happy to pay tribute to them again today, because it has made our passports safer. As the hon. Lady is aware, however, identity checks using passports are not reliant solely on a chip. The documents have a range of physical security measures that are designed to prevent forgery and tampering.

On time scales, the new design of the UK passport will be issued from 5 October, and it will contain new security printing features to combat fraud. If the hon. Lady wants more detail, she will appreciate that I cannot discuss security measures.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

No, I do not. This is all very well, and I am aware of the new passport design and how secure it is—the Minister and I probably know more than we can share here today. However, if he is so confident that the chip is secure for the facial image, why is it not secure for a fingerprint? Will he clarify the Government’s plans on fingerprints in passports and the security of those documents beyond October? I am asking about the longer term.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

The fundamental difference between us is that I think that our passport is secure. [ Interruption. ] The former Government Whip, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak is howling with laughter, because eight weeks ago he was sitting as a member of a Government who—

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

The Minister says that he thinks that our passports are secure, but was that the view of the Foreign Secretary when he asked the former Foreign Secretary about the security of British passports after the incident concerning Mossad? If the Minister looks at the record, I think that he will find that it was not.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I was about to discuss that issue. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch made another serious point about what has happened in Washington this week. There are clearly people around the world who seek to forge passports. That happens all the time, but it would be noteworthy if the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman were suggesting that British passports are not secure, since they were responsible for them about eight weeks ago. The world has not changed very much since then, and the same dangers and problems still exist.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

I am sure that traditional passports provided a secure method of identification, but all the evidence suggests that biometric data cannot be readily copied or fraudulently produced. Is there not an irrefutable argument that a biometric element to an identity document or passport is the way forward?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

Passports currently include a biometric element, and a long and wholly out-of-order debate is still to be had on the absolute security of biometrics. The hon. Gentleman is aware that even fingerprints are not 100% secure, and that there can be confusion. Clearly, one can use biometrics to establish identity, which the current British passport does.

The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch asked about the medium-term future, and, as she knows, the programme on second generation biometric passports has been halted. It is not continuing, and I do not think we can be any clearer than that.

Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab) rose—

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

On my previous point, I assure the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch that British citizens with British passports have the same travelling rights as all EU citizens.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The Minister has been far from clear. He says, “It’s halted. That’s it.” Halted does not mean repealed. A new word seems to have come into the Government’s lexicon since they were elected. We have had commissions, reviews and halts. I understand repeal, but is it halted for now or is it absolutely stopped? The Minister is saying today that the Government will not be introducing fingerprints into British passports from 2012 or at any point in the future. We need to be clear about that.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

There is no doubt that it has been halted. I cannot be clearer—that is a perfectly clear statement. Let me answer some more of the hon. Lady’s questions. She wanted the exact number, and I said that it was just under 15,000, but she was not satisfied with that. It is 14,670. Almost 3,000 cards were issued free of charge to airside workers. She asked about the cost of a refund. With administrative costs, the remaining 11,500 or so would cost just under £400,000. She said that that would be about the same cost as writing notification letters, but actually the cost of that is £20,000, so that is massively different. Opposition Members need not write this down, because that information was given in a written answer by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary two weeks ago.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

Apologies if I am going backwards, but what the Minister said about biometric data and the fingerprint programme being halted is far from clear. The shadow Minister asked whether the Government had considered the national identity database, whether the programme is to be halted in light of those considerations, and what the future of the programme is to be, with reference to that database. It is cause for concern that the only answer given is that it is to be halted; nothing more certain was said about whether there will be a repeal or whether the scheme will go ahead at some point in future. That raises concerns about it potentially being a huge waste of public money.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Order. That is another very long intervention. Members are free to make speeches, but interventions should be brief.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

Apologies, Mr Caton. I do have a question: might it not be a waste of money to destroy the national identity database?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

We will come to a debate on the national identity register under clause 3, so it would be out of order for me to address such issues during a debate on clause 1. I suggest we return to the subject of the national identity register. The hon. Lady raises a perfectly valid point. How expensive would it be to carry on with the register? Indeed, amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch, the former Minister, address that. I look forward to discussing the issue.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

To return to costs, I am glad that the Minister has clarified how many people would require a refund if the Government decided to do the decent thing and issued refunds. Does he think £400,000 is a large or a small amount of money for the Government to issue? Does he think that £30 to the individuals concerned is inconsequential to them? I contend that £30 is not an inconsequential sum, and people bought those cards in good faith.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

Any sum of taxpayers’ money spent by Ministers should be carefully considered, and Ministers should be frugal and prudent in their use of public expenditure. I regret that Ministers in a previous Government were not—they wasted far more than £400,000.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Will the Minister give way?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

May I finish one intervention before I take the next? I think that the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South asked me to repeat the figure that I just gave, which is 11,500.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

The hon. Gentleman is obviously a Home Office Minister if he thinks that £400,000 is a difficult sum. How does he justify spending £50 million on the election of a police commissioner, and siphoning money out of the police budget—money that should be spent fighting crime?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Order. I would be grateful if the Minister did not reply to that. We need to concentrate on the Bill.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I spot a nice try by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

No answer, then?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

There are plenty of answers, but not for this clause.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

Does the Minister realise that he is talking about taxpayers’ money? They want the £30 that they paid the Government for an identity card to be returned.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

That is the point that I made: the previous Government, whom the hon. Lady supported, claimed that the identity card system would pay for itself because people would pay for the cards. It did not pay for itself—it took money from taxpayers. On a point of principle, we and our Liberal Democrat partners said all along that a non-Labour Government of any kind would scrap the identity card scheme. That was made perfectly clear, and it is disingenuous of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch to say that nobody knew about it. Anyone who paid attention to the issue—anyone who bought an ID card would presumably have been interested in the scheme—might have clocked the fact that the card would not outlive the Labour Government, and that spending the £30 was a bit risky.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

Will the Minister give some consideration to the fact that many members of the British public do not necessarily follow the inner workings of Government with such avid interest? An ordinary person on a low income who requires some form of identification and is offered an easy way of getting it would not care whether the Government were Labour, Conservative or Liberal. The Government owe a duty to their citizens who have entered into a contract with them.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

That is an interesting argument. It suggests that no Government could change the previous one’s tax rates—the biggest things that any Government deal with—because they affect the financial circumstances of every citizen in this country. I have never heard anyone on either side of the House argue that it is illegitimate for a new Government to change the tax rates of previous Governments.

Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow)

The Opposition have voiced concerns about people on low incomes spending £30, but why did the previous Government charge them that fee in the first place? Why did they not give the cards to people on low incomes for free?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I suspect that the reason why we have not heard about how many people scrimped together their last £30 to buy an identity card is because very few people found themselves in that situation. Moreover, while we are talking about wasted money, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, mentioned the figure of £400,000, but between April 2006 and March 2010, the previous Government spent £251 million of taxpayers’ money on the ID card scheme.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

For the record, it is important to note that some Government Members on the Committee are sniggering about people who paid £30, which is a lot of money for many people. The few who were able to get a card chose to do so because £77.50 for a passport was a lot of money. I have constituents who were very keen to have a card, and I am sure that my hon. Friends have such examples, too. Some of those people did not qualify for the scheme because it applied only to people with recently expired passports, so they were desperately waiting for the time when they could get a card. It is unacceptable to belittle and laugh at members of the British public who have paid £30.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

The hon. Lady has returned to synthetic indignation mode. I have constituents for whom £30 is a lot of money, and had they asked about the ID card scheme—nobody asked because nobody was interested—I would have advised them not to waste their money on it, particularly because a different Government would abolish it after the general election.

Grahame M. Morris rose—

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I wish to make some progress. The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch asked about the commercial decisions. Negotiations with companies are ongoing and she will recognise, as a former Minister, that it would not be appropriate for me to speculate on costs at this stage. I am happy to assure her, however, that the results of those discussions will be published in the Identity and Passport Service’s 2010-11 annual report.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

What is the approximate date of publication?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

This year’s report came out last week, so I imagine that report will come out around this time next year.

The hon. Lady also asked about staff. The restructuring of the IPS as a result of this Bill resulted in 60 temporary staff being released three months earlier than expected. These were people who generally commenced their temporary employment with the IPS between January and March 2010. She also asked about applications for packs. This is an interesting statistic: 100,000 requests for an ID pack were made. Of those 100,000 people, who were clearly the potential early adopters, only around 15,000 pursued it. As we know, 3,000 were given them free anyway. Some 11,500 people voluntarily went ahead with the process. I do not know, although it is interesting to speculate, whether the others decided not to because they thought it was a complete waste of time or because they doubted whether the scheme would continue.

The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, referred to passports. In the Mossad case, the passports used were old-style ones that did not contain a facial biometric image or chip, so there is no direct read-across to passport security from that case.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

Passport security is an important issue—I accept that the passports used in the Mossad case were the old-style ones—and that is one of the reasons why the passport was regularly updated with new security measures. As I said, the Government have to be ahead of the curve on this. I still do not know whether “a halt” means never again. Are the Government unwinding the infrastructure, and stopping contracts with the businesses that were developing the database and the production of the new-style passport book? We need to keep ahead of the curve in this country. Will the Minister respond specifically to those points about what he is doing about the infrastructure?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I have said everything that can be said about that. The hon. Lady is inviting a huge amount of speculation, which I suspect, inter alia, is out of order under the terms of the clause. The programme has been halted. The work on it has been halted. I do not think I can be clearer than that. I hope that I have addressed all the specific questions.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

If that is the case, then I should like to know—the Minister may need to write to me on this—what negotiations are under way with the organisations that were developing the passport book. What compensation, if any, will they be given for the break in the contract? When will that figure be reported to Parliament?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

The hon. Lady rightly anticipates that those commercial details are probably not best shared across the Committee. I will write to her on that subject. I have sought to address all of the many detailed questions on the clause, and I commend it to the Committee.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton. I owe it to all my constituents and former constituents whom I consulted regularly on ID cards at least to comment on the Government’s proposals. Perhaps the Minister has never engaged in conversation with his constituents about ID cards, but the majority of those whom I consulted supported the principle of ID cards. There are obviously always arguments about the detail of any scheme, but my experience has been that people, certainly in my part of the country, have not fundamentally objected to the principle. It would be wrong for their views to be entirely ignored as the Government attempt to steamroller this policy through.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I am particularly fascinated by that last phrase. If the hon. Gentleman’s party feels so strongly about the policy that it thinks we are steamrollering it through, why did the party not vote against the Bill on Second Reading?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

That is relatively simple. We accept that the combination of the coalition is opposed to ID cards. “Steamrollering” refers to the fact that this is the only bit of legislation that the coalition has so far been able to introduce. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a single other bit of legislation, so my comment was a reasonable one.

I was about to say that I am grateful to the Minister for now giving us the figures. He tells us that to compensate those who in good faith purchased the cards would cost about £400,000 and that it is not reasonable to spend that amount. However, he thinks that it is perfectly reasonable to spend £5 million this year on abolishing the scheme itself. Perhaps in new coalition-speak that is value for money, but I find it hard to understand.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

Again, on costs and cost-benefits, the Minister did not really address the impact on “Safeguarding Identity”, the Home Office strategy—in fact, a multi-departmental cross-Government strategy—designed not only to guard against benefit fraud but to deliver more efficient services. Is that being addressed properly in the consideration of the cost-benefits of the measure?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

My hon. Friend makes a perfect point. It cannot have escaped anyone’s attention that we have heard absolutely nothing about that from the Minister. I simply cannot understand why it is all right to spend £5 million of taxpayers’ money on abolishing the scheme but it is not acceptable to spend £400,000 on compensating poor people who in good faith responded to an initiative made available by the Government of the day.

Dr Huppert rose—

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I think that I am getting an academic intervention—I should probably stop.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the cost of the scheme and the steamrollering, but does he realise that he ought to be complaining about his Government, who spent millions of pounds—£251 million, I think the Minister said—on introducing the scheme, steamrollering over a massive number of objections, including from many people in my constituency, where I can assure Members the scheme was not popular?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

That was possibly not an academic intervention after all.

I think that the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I am delighted to hear that he has an independent view. That is possibly not good for his health in the coalition, but I accept his anxieties. The scheme was originally proposed by a Conservative Administration and supported by a former Conservative leader. It was introduced twice before general elections and was put through Parliament in 2006. Therefore, if someone thinks that that is steamrollering, they are simply wrong.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

Again, on the massive public opposition to the concept of an ID card, I do not think that there is any evidence base for that. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister suggests, as does the written evidence submitted to the Committee, that the polls indicated that there was public support on the basis of national security, and the more efficient combating of ID and benefit fraud—[ Interruption. ] Several Members say that there is no support for the card, but I suspect that that might not be the case.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I think that my hon. Friend is right. This Government have produced two publicity-driven cheerleaders to tell us what they think about ID cards, but I do not recall them producing a single piece of evidence between them. If I remember correctly, the lady from Liberty did not know the details of the database for her own organisation. She was not what I would call a reliable witness. [ Interruption. ] I simply make the point that the lady was asked in good faith to give us details about her organisation’s database and she could not. That is simply a fact. We know she spends her time touring the TV studios promoting her views, but I do not think that is the same as evidence.

The point I was making was that the Minister is prepared to spend a great deal of money abolishing the scheme; he is treating the people who bought cards in good faith shabbily. He is creating a rather dangerous precedent. If the assumption in the future is to be that, because a party in opposition says that it may do something if elected, no action should be taken to support measures that the Government of the day ask for, we are in very dangerous territory. We have a Government at the moment who have broken every single promise that both coalition parties made before they were elected. For example, VAT. Do not pay VAT because they said they were against it. Now they are for it. We should be careful about the precedent. The Minister is now reading his comment in the background there.

With regard to Equitable Life, I am amazed that the Minister supports compensating the people who inadvertently bought Equitable Life policies—

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Order. We are straying a little bit off the point. Will you return to the Bill, please?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I apologise. I was simply making the point that it is wrong for any Government to punish individuals who acted in good faith on the basis of the information they had from the previous Government. No one is saying that an incoming Government cannot change policy; we are saying that decency should be a standard. The Minister is a decent man, so I am surprised that he is prepared to take these steps. I am happy to accept that he is not responsible; someone else has probably put him up to it. If he wants to tell me who, I will be happy to attack them rather than the decent gentleman opposite me.

I was struck that the Minister seemed to have no response to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington on the issue of identity fraud. Everyone knows that that is a major problem in this country. There cannot be a single Member of the Committee who has not come across a constituent who has suffered—[Interruption.] From a sedentary position, my hon. Friend suggests that the coalition is an example of identity fraud. I am not sure if that is true but I can see why he said it. It certainly is for the people who voted Liberal Democrat.

Identity fraud is a major issue for every single person in the country. I am amazed that the Minister has nothing to say about that. He has no proposals and no suggestions. No one is suggesting that the scheme proposed by the previous Government was perfect, but it was an opportunity to address some of the issues of identity fraud.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

In a second. It is apparent from the polling that the Minister disparages, that some people who bought into the scheme did so because they were concerned about identity fraud.

Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham)

I raise two simple questions. Should the people who were given their identity cards receive reimbursement? I am presuming, no, if they were given them. Secondly, are the Government expected to seek back from Manchester airport the hundreds of thousands of pounds of benefit that it received?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I make it clear that I am talking about the people who purchased identity cards. That is why I was so keen to hear the Minister give us that figure. We are talking about the people who purchased those cards in good faith, and who have been defrauded by this Government.

Guy Opperman rose—

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I will happily give way to the hon. Member for Hexham again so that he can describe in detail what the hundreds of thousands of pounds of benefits that he refers to are, but I will first give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

The issue of compensation seems to be quite straightforward. Government Members are setting a dangerous precedent; the hon. Member for Hexham gave a particular example. I am thinking of a situation where an incoming Labour Government may decide, for example, to nationalise the train operating companies. Would we do that without compensation? Is that what the hon. Gentleman is advocating? Would we say, as he has, to Manchester airport, “We want back the subsidy that we have given you”?

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Order. The point has been made.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

My hon. Friend is right. I remember Conservative Members’ outrage when Railtrack, a failed company that exploited people left, right and centre, was taken back into public ownership, so he makes an absolutely good point. We are concerned about the precedent, and we are coming to know the spiteful nature of the performance. I think the hon. Member for Hexham wanted to make a further point.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Order. Although Mr McCabe has invited you, Mr Opperman, to intervene, if you want to go into great detail, it would be more appropriate to make a speech of your own.

Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham)

I do not need to make a detailed intervention; I can deal with this in two ways. The answers to Questions 52 and 76 that I asked a couple of days ago provide evidence that Manchester airport received well in excess of £100,000 for 2,400 cards, on top of the cards given to London City airport. The benefit, which I specifically put to Mr Fazackerley in Question 76, was well in excess of £100,000.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I am grateful. We will get to discuss the detail of the matter under new clause 2. Perhaps it is new coalition economics, but “in excess of £100,000” is not quite the same as “hundreds of thousands”, but I will not dwell on the point.

In fairness to the coalition, both parties had said in the run-up to the election that were they elected—or, were they able to form a Government, as neither of them were elected—they would do away with ID cards. However, I do not recall at any stage in the process that they stated that they would do away with biometric passports. I understood, in the hours that I have spent in this Committee Room listening to the Minister in his previous incarnation, that he was a fan of biometric passports. However, listening to the news this morning, I was struck by the fact that the Foreign Secretary will announce that there will be a set of new relations with countries across the globe. I think he is making a speech somewhere this morning, where he will outline Britain’s new future and our new relationships. I would like to know how that will work if we are not able to travel. Countries across the globe will insist on biometric passports, and Britons who try to participate in that scheme will be completely caught up in exhaustive visa applications. Rather than having new relations, we will end up being the poor relations when it comes to travelling. Whatever the coalition’s desire to do away with ID cards, I cannot see why it makes sense to make it difficult for Britons to participate in a scheme that will be adopted by countries across the globe—it seems entirely pointless.

When the Minister used the evidence of Angela Epstein—[Interruption.]. I am delighted to hear the Under-Secretary speak; I thought that she had taken a vow of silence when she joined the coalition Government. The Minister said that the evidence demonstrated that Angela Epstein had not found any use for the ID card at all, and that that was a total vindication of his position. She actually said:

“the fact is that the scheme was in its embryonic stage, and I have not had a chance to use the card properly, so I can neither prove nor disprove the arguments about ID cards. That is the flaw in where the Bill is at; it is a knee-jerk response to a scheme that has not had a chance to prove what it could or could not do.”––[Official Report, Identity Documents Public Bill Committee, 29 June 2010; c. 32, Q86.]

That is slightly different from the impression that the Minister sought to give the Committee this morning. I do not want to accuse him of misleading the Committee, but I certainly think that he is guilty of misinterpreting a reasonable piece of evidence from someone who described herself as an honest and willing member of the public.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

I am sure that my hon. Friend will remember how forthright and confident Ms Epstein was in giving evidence to the Committee. Would he accept, though, that at certain points it was difficult for her to give that evidence and to make her point clearly, given the often discourteous behaviour of some of the Government Members who at times shouted her down, laughed and sneered? She came as an individual, as member of the public, to give evidence to the Committee and it is not unreasonable to expect her to be listened to courteously.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

I would be grateful, Mr McCabe, if you did not respond on the issue of the behaviour of other hon. Members and instead continued with your speech.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Naturally, I take your ruling, Mr Caton, although everyone will have heard what my hon. Friend has just said.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

Angela Epstein said:

“I have not had enough time to use my card yet.”––[Official Report, Identity Documents Public Bill Committee, 29 June 2010; c. 39, Q114.]

That answer is clear. It is from the first person to have an identity card and I think it says how useful it was.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Again, I am always grateful for academics. Angela Epstein was the first person to receive a card—perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to tell me how he stumbled on that bit of information.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

How would the hon. Gentleman know whether that was actually the case? She may have felt that she was among the first people. Unless the hon. Gentleman has access to the database, how could he know that?

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should assume that the witness was lying to the Committee?

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I am suggesting that the hon. Gentleman cannot say that with certainty, because one of his points was that we do not know and we do not have access to the database.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

Order. We are labouring this point. I should be grateful, Mr McCabe, if you would continue with your speech.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Okay, Mr Caton. I am always happy to take your advice. Thank you very much. The Minister rather dismissively commented on a question he was asked about Home Office polling. Perhaps he could actually answer this question: was he suggesting that the Home Office will not engage in any polling in the future? Is that a coalition commitment? I am happy to hear that that is the case, but it is an astonishing announcement from any Government. I do not know how many jobs that will cost and how much money it will involve. Is the Minister suggesting that on this issue, there will be no further polling, or was that a commitment about the Home Office position in the future?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

It is always open to the hon. Gentleman to listen to what I say. I said that we were not going to waste money polling on this issue. Incidentally, if he wants to do some homework, he can see an interesting page on polling evidence in the very good document produced by the House of Commons Library, which shows a steady decline in support for the ID card scheme, particularly when people were asked how much it cost.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

I always listen to this Minister. I have said that I think he is a thoroughly decent man; I just cannot understand how he has got in with such a bad crowd. I accept that the issue of cost has always been a factor, but there is also considerable polling that shows that when the issue of cost is extracted from the debate, people are in favour of ID cards.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

On the point about the data produced in the very useful document to which the Minister refers, it in fact shows that there was a majority of approval in the country for the ID cards and that that dropped only when members of the public were asked whether their opinion would remain the same if the cost was £100. We all know that the cost of the ID card was not £100, so the data to which he refers do not show what he is saying.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

My hon. Friend makes a fair point. Perhaps if people have money to throw around, they can afford to sit there and snigger about these things. I think that it is a fair point that people have demonstrated in poll after poll that they support ID cards whenever the question—[Interruption.] Would the hon. Member for Cannock Chase like to intervene or is he just having a private conversation? I am not sure. Poll after poll has demonstrated that people support ID cards. It has been abundantly clear that they have been concerned about the question of cost, however. That is why the previous Government took steps to reduce the cost as much as possible and to make the scheme self-financing, so that we did not waste taxpayers’ money.

I think that it was the current Home Secretary who described this legislation as symbolic. If it is, it is symbolic of a coalition that has no respect for ordinary taxpayers who in good faith spent money on purchasing the cards. It is symbolic of a Government who have no plan to deal with identity fraud. It is symbolic of a Government who may make it more difficult for Britons to travel abroad and it is symbolic of the spiteful nature of the Government that we shall have to deal with in the years ahead.

Clause 2

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I beg to move amendment 1, in clause 2, page 1, line 16, leave out from ‘day’ to end of line 18 and insert

‘will remain valid until the expiry date of the card.’.

Martin Caton (Labour, Gower)

With this it will be convenient to take amendment 2, in clause 2, page 1, line 19, leave out subsections (3) to (6).

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

In the short time left, I want to highlight why we tabled the amendment in this way. There are two points. First, we believe strongly that if someone bought a card for £30 in good faith, it should do what it says on the tin—it should be a 10-year identity document for that individual. We have rehearsed well a number of the arguments, but I know that my hon. Friends will have examples of individuals who paid £30 for a card and have used it and found it helpful or who had hoped to use it in the future and had a reasonable expectation that because the expiry date was 10 years after the date of issue, the document would indeed be valid for 10 years from the date of issue.

Our contention is that it is not impossible to provide for that. It would not be impossible to allow the card to continue, even if other aspects of the Bill were taken through Parliament. It would be very easy to transfer the data, with the individual’s permission, to the passport database, because essentially the information given, other than the fingerprint, was the same. In doing that, we might lose the capability of the fingerprint, but I believe—

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

I remind the Committee that with this we are taking amendment 2, in clause 2, page 1, line 19, leave out subsections (3) to (5).

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

Again, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. We had a good debate this morning about some of the wider issues of the Bill, and touched on some of the issues that clause 2 raises. Our contention remains that people who paid £30 in good faith should not lose out as a result of the Government’s action. Many people share that concern. Michael Turberville, a gentleman living in Reading, wrote to me and, having thanked my colleagues and me for standing up for citizens who purchased the card in good faith, said:

“As a frequent traveller to the EU, I looked forward to having my card and obtained it as soon as it was possible to do so.

Now I find that with only a few months of use, my durable convenient travel document is about to be scrapped with NO refund! Never in the history of the world has any country ever issued a Government Document that was then retracted with no refund or replacement, etc.

Please do what is necessary to kill this bill”.

I have had to let Mr Turberville down, in that we are not killing the Bill as a whole, because we recognise the democratic process, but that is just one of a number of letters that I have received. I could read out many more, but I shall save the Committee from having to listen to similar points from other people. There is a real sense of injustice among those who have paid £30 and will not be able to use the card.

We propose amendment 1 because we believe that there is no reason why the card cannot remain valid until its expiry date. We recognise that the coalition Government have the view that no new cards should be issued. That was the one bit of current Government policy that I was clear about—they would not be keen to issue new cards—but to scrap, spitefully, the existing cards seems ridiculous.

I am not the Minister, and it is for the Minister to say how this might be done, but given that we have a system of passports and a passport database, and given that even without the biometrics, the identity card has some validity as a slightly less valuable but nevertheless valid form of ID, it seems to me that there is scope for transferring the card into being a lighter version of the passport. It is not for me to come up with the ways in which that could be done, but why on earth cannot the card remain valid for the time that it was advertised as being valid for? It is important that we push that point.

People have already got used to using the card. If those who have had to prove their identity with the card are asked to prove it again, they will have to get another form of ID, which can cause great difficulty. Those who have been using the card—of course, not everyone who has one will use it regularly—will find that quite challenging.

No doubt people have written to all hon. Members, but certainly those who have written to my hon. Friends and me have made it clear that those who have been using the card for travel have found it very convenient, not only as a travel document but as a proof of identity abroad. Expats in Spain have been able to apply for a card, and a number of expats—not that many, because we had not at that point rolled the scheme out more widely—will have one. In some European countries such as Spain, people are required to provide a form of ID every time they use their credit card, so individuals there who have an ID card will be keen to see it continue to be valid.

As I mentioned in this morning’s sitting, the Bill is worded in such a clever way that it is impossible for us to ask, through an amendment, for individuals to get their money back, but the relevant points and the principle were well articulated earlier. We think that what is proposed in the amendment is a reasonable compromise—the cards already out there should be allowed to continue, essentially as passports-lite.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

Given that some of the cards would, under the hon. Lady’s proposals, have nine and a half years or so to go, is she not concerned at all that if one were to follow her suggestion, people would be expected to recognise one of these identity cards in nine years’ time, know what it was and know that it was one of the few hundred still in circulation? Is she not concerned that that would be extremely bad with regard to security, and that it would open up a lot of fraud possibilities?

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I completely disagree, and I shall explain why. Many documents in this country are issued in small numbers. An example is the Glasgow citizen card. Other documents produced are specific to cities or uses, and they are often used as ID. There is a famous story that when Michael Foot turned up to Brezhnev’s funeral and was asked for photo ID, he showed his London bus pass, which was accepted. I jest, but in all seriousness, there are an awful lot of documents out there that are not made in great numbers but are still recognised.

In particular—we have in front of us the Immigration Minister, who will know this better than most of us—there are a lot of different documents and visa vignettes issued by both the British Government and other countries. There are companies that employ swathes of people just to recognise those different documents. One additional, clearly valid, British identity card could be treated, we suggest, much like a passport, so that there would still be some way to verify it through data held by the Government.

If there were issues, they would have been raised, but there have been no problems with recognition of the few cards issued so far. There was one problem with a national company, but that was dealt with; the company said that it was an error on the ground. People have been using the cards in small numbers, and the cards have been recognised. I hope that that addresses that point.

It seems unjust and unfair—it is a bit sad, really—that this new Government, who talk about a new politics of coalition and a different way of listening to people and doing things, are saying that the little man or woman who bought the card in good faith will not get any compensation or further use from the document, while the big companies and corporations, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said earlier, will receive large amounts of compensation. The large companies, such as IBM or Thales, will presumably not be out of pocket—opportunity may be lost for British business at a time of recession, but that is another point—but individuals will be. In exchange, we will have to find another form of identity document, for which they will also have to pay. One appeal of identity cards, without repeating the argument for them, was that they were a different form of identity document that people could have even if they did not need to drive, or did not need to use it as an international travel document.

Amendment 2 is fairly self-explanatory; if amendment 1 is accepted, clearly amendment 2 follows. I have summarised the issues involving the card’s validity. It is a question of natural justice. If any of us were to buy a consumer good and a similar situation arose, we would expect some recompense. Various consumer protection Acts protect the consumer in this country. It ill behoves this Government, with their professed new agenda of openness, listening and being a Government of the people—well, that is not quite the phrase that they have used; a Government of “big society”, whatever that might mean—to deprive the British public, through their first Act, of money, a product or both.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, in my first Committee. I have a few comments to make, particularly as some of my constituents have applied for identity cards.

The world has changed during our lifetime. My dad did not have to pass a driving test, because there were none when he started to drive. He did not have a cheque guarantee card, because when he got his first chequebook, his word was sufficient proof that he was a person of enough substance to guarantee the amount written on the cheque. Times have changed. We must now prove our identities often and in depth. I have had to hire a car on two recent occasions, and I had to produce not only my driving licence, but the paper part of the licence showing whether I had any convictions, plus two recent utility bills in my name. I could produce them, but many people cannot—married women and people who cohabit may not have bills in their own names, and young people and a range of others may have similar difficulties.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

On the point about the number of ID cards out there and the variety of uses that they have, I had a conversation with someone last night, a retail newsagent’s representative, regarding the citizen card and proof of identity card. That is another area where a national ID card would have provided some coverage.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Indeed, there has been a proliferation of cards. The idea with the identity card was that there would be one card, which was recognised, and which would allow young people to produce proof of age and of who they were.

The witnesses from Liberty and Justice acknowledged that people would need some form of identity card, but could not say what sort of form it would take. There was concern about having a huge database, but they acknowledged that poor people in particular would still need some form of identity. It is easy for us to pay, but not for everyone. People ask why they should have to pay £77 or whatever it costs for a passport if they never travel, or why they should have a driving licence if they never drive. Many people cannot get a driving licence, perhaps because they have a visual impairment or epilepsy, or some other medical condition that does not allow them to drive.

There is a lack understanding of what is it like for the poor to be disfranchised, to a certain extent. I do not know whether other Members have been involved in elections for those who might be signatories to group bank accounts. It is not about whether someone would be a good treasurer of an organisation, or would be a good person to be signatory to a bank account; it is about whether a person can prove their identity at the bank—whether they can take a passport or utility bills with them. If they cannot do so, they cannot even sign for the local community association account.

The Minister accuses Labour Members of synthetic indignation. I therefore assume that the pilot scheme did not take place in the constituencies of Conservative members of the Committee. The Minister’s comments are extremely insulting to those of my constituents who have written to me saying how upset they are that the card is being halted and that they will not get their money back. Indeed, two pensioners were moved to write to The Bolton News yesterday to explain that they had chosen identity cards rather than renewing their passports, and were disgusted that they were not getting their £30 back. I have to say that £47 may not be significant to people in this room, but it is extremely significant to pensioners and others with low incomes. Adding it up, the difference between the cost of an ID card and a passport would be enough for a holiday for many.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch spoke about consumer protection. That means expecting satisfactory quality, and goods that are fit for purpose and that match the description given. When purchasing something from the Government, one would expect those standards to be maintained; a card purchased from the Government should do what it says on the tin—it should be valid for 10 years, and it should prove your identity. The assumption is that people should have known that the identity cards would go. However, people in Bolton West and most of the north-west voted Labour at the last general election, so why should they think that the cards would go? Why should they expect there to be a coalition Government?

The Bill has been meanly written. Much as I wish to, I cannot table an amendment on behalf of my constituents to allow a refund for those who bought cards in the best faith.

Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow)

The hon. Lady said that some people wanted ID cards because they did not have utility bills and so forth, but as with applying for a passport, surely when one applied for an ID card, one would need to show some identification, and that includes utility bills. If the last Government cared so much about people on low incomes, why did they make them pay £30 for a card in the first place? Why did they not let people on low incomes pay nothing?

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

My understanding was that during the pilot phase, people had to have a passport in order to have an identity card. We are talking about the very first stages of an identity card. We were running pilot schemes in the north-west, for young people in London and for Manchester and London City airports. The whole of the scheme had not been rolled out. The hon. Gentleman asks a pertinent question: is £30 too much for the low-paid? But when one looks at alternative forms of identification, one sees that perhaps it is a price worth paying. Clearly, had we continued with identity cards, and had there been a Labour Government, I might well have argued in this place that we should reduce the cost of the cards for some people. However, the guarantee was that the cards would pay for themselves over a 10-year period. It was important to establish that.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

The hon. Lady made the point that the people who applied for the first cards—about 15,000 of them—already had passports, so it is really entirely synthetic to complain that they do not have an alternative form of identity.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

What the hon. Gentleman did not hear me say was that the scheme was at its first stage. I am sure that the shadow Minister will be able to answer these points better than I can. At the first stage, there was the need for that arrangement, but the Government are talking about getting rid of identity cards and halting them for ever. In terms of the roll-out, we are saying that those people who are currently disfranchised will not have the opportunity to join the scheme, and we do not know what opportunity they will have in future.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that the hon. Member for Harlow expressed an admirable sentiment when he said that it might be difficult for those on low incomes to purchase cards. Does she think that the Government should consider means-testing passports? I do not know whether the Government are considering that in these difficult economic circumstances. Admirable though the hon. Gentleman’s comments were, I am not aware that such a scheme is forthcoming. Would she like to comment on that?

Julie Hilling rose—

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

Order. Before the hon. Lady comments, I should point out that some of these interventions are taking us some way away from the amendments, which relate to the cancellation of the cards.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

As a new Member, I am not sure that I am able to comment on some of the points made. However, on the point about the passport, yes, those applying for cards had to have a recently expired or current passport.

Nigel Mills (Conservative, Amber Valley)

I am getting a sense of confusion; the hon. Lady makes a powerful argument for keeping ID cards, but she is now abstaining for a second time on the Bill to repeal them. We are debating an amendment on the issue of whether the cards in existence should be allowed to continue. I am not hearing much support for that from her.

Julie Hilling (Labour, Bolton West)

It seems that the hon. Gentleman has not listened to the points that I have raised. As you rightly pointed out, Mr. Streeter, we should be debating the amendments. If the hon. Gentleman had been listening, he would have heard about the comments in my postbag from constituents who are extremely angry and upset that they will not get their £30 back from the Government. They purchased cards in good faith from their Government, expecting that their Government would then do what was said on the card and provide them with a travel card and identification card for the next 10 years. The Government have been mean—that is the best word that I can think of—not to allow people a refund. I urge them to reconsider that point, and to refund people their £30 or, at the very least, allow the cards to continue to be used.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I fully recognise that there is a mandate to scrap ID cards, but although the Minister is carrying out his manifesto promise, it is a great shame that he is unable to do so in a manner that is fair and decent to people who acted in good faith and took up the previous Government’s offer of the personal security of a biometric identity card.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West pointed out, the ID card scheme is in its infancy. Unfortunately, the coalition Government have decided to kill it off before giving it the chance to prove or disprove its value. However, some people decided that they wanted to protect their identity, or simply wanted a form of identification, perhaps to prove their age. I mentioned the citizen card, a proof-of-identity-type card. Many young people have found the benefit of such cards. Those who got the ID cards entered into a contract with their Government, regardless of political affiliation and party, and that contract is now being torn up by the coalition Government. Those people who acted in good faith might feel let down, particularly given that the whole idea is mean-spirited.

Offering repayment to people who purchased cards would be a welcome gesture. Alternatively, the cards could be allowed to run their full term of 10 years. The decision to terminate current, in-use cards only one month after the Bill receives Royal Assent, without any compensation for those who purchased the card, is unnecessary, unfair and a particular shame. When people applied for an ID card, they did so on the understanding that for their £30 they would receive their card, and that it would last for 10 years, until the given expiry date. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister has said, whenever any of us enters into a contract—whether it is a warranty for a piece of electrical equipment or anything else—if we find out that a private company has reneged on its promise, we rightly expect our money back. I cannot see that it is any different when a citizen enters into a quite a straightforward contract with their Government.

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

Does my hon. Friend agree that citizens of a country are entitled to hold their Government to a higher standard than a private enterprise? We expect more of our Government than we do of private companies.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

That is a self-evident truth. It is a shame that the first Bill of a new coalition Government is sending out such unfair and unequal messages—that is to be regretted.

An ordinary citizen entering into a contract expects it to be honoured, particularly a contract with the Government. In fact, surely people would think slightly more of the Government and have more trust in them than they would in Tesco or Sainsbury when purchasing a store card. Perhaps the Minister should think a little about his actions as it really surprises me that he wants his first Act of Parliament to break the bond of trust between the citizen and the state. We have not heard any serious arguments from Government Members about why it is such a good idea for the Government to break the contract and make all ID cards void in one month, as clause 2 will do. Do they not expect people to feel entitled to a refund?

Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham)

When the policy was originally drafted, it must have been presumed that the companies involved would insist on a contractual indemnity, hence the reason why they are being repaid. The previous Government could easily have inserted a clause into the ID card scheme that would have required repayment in the circumstances that it was cancelled, something they knew was a possibility.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

I am not a contractual lawyer, but a general principle applies. If we go back to some of the issues that were raised this morning in respect of the comparison with large companies and the large corporate interests that were involved in providing the IT infrastructure, it seems that their interests are well safeguarded.

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

May I just finish this point? Those bodies will receive full recompense and compensation under the terms of the contract. They have no doubt paid an expensive lawyer a great deal of money for advice to protect their interests. An ordinary citizen would anticipate a degree of fairness from the Government, and when there is a change of Government, there is a responsibility for that to continue.

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in 2006, the date of the Act that is being repealed, it would have been ridiculous for the then Government to put in a cancellation clause on the chance that they would lose the next general election? Why would they undo what they were putting forward as their policy?

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

That is an eminently sensible point. I agree wholeheartedly.

Government Members are sneering at the amount of £30 as if it were a measly sum and would matter little to anyone. Coming from a community in the north-east, my experience is that £30 is a significant sum. Apart from being a matter of principle, it matters in practical terms. The Minister said this morning that people would not be scraping around for the last £30 to spend on an ID card. Perhaps he and his hon. Friends are highlighting their detachment from the real lives and everyday hardships experienced by ordinary people.

Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow)

The hon. Gentleman casts aspersions on Government Members and has said that they do not care about £30. The position is quite the opposite. I did not want anyone to have to waste £30 on an identity card because such action would be completely unnecessary and that is an extortionate sum.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

A simple solution has been highlighted in the debate and indeed came out during the witness evidence that was taken on Tuesday. If the Government feel strongly about such matters, there is an opportunity to introduce a system of means-testing to make travel documents or passports available at a lesser charge or even free to disadvantaged groups. I look forward to the hon. Gentleman pursuing that policy with his Government.

As for the impact on employment, the Minister said that 60 temporary jobs were at stake and that they were temporary short-term contracts, as if a temporary or an agency worker is a second-class citizen. That is not a fair assessment. It creates a bad impression. Those involved have families and financial commitments, and if the scheme is discontinued without personnel operating the system, that will have an impact. An ID card is perhaps the cheapest form of identification for someone looking for supplementary identification without the need to carry a passport.

It would therefore be likely that those on low incomes or indeed young people needing regularly to prove their age would opt for an ID card. A provisional driving licence commonly used by young people to prove their age would cost £50, so we should assume that someone on low income or with modest means would be most likely to purchase an ID card if they were looking for a simple form of identification. We heard that view from at least one witness on Tuesday.

How does the Minister intend to word his letter to those people whom he is so plainly swindling? I recommend that he start and finish with a sincere apology. If I were treated in such a manner by a high street store, I would not shop there again. Any benefits of the ID scheme proposed by the previous Government have been ignored by the new coalition, and it is a shame that the Minister has not provided a clear and consistent message about why he is so keen to kill the scheme at this early stage.

Government Members have also highlighted the costs of the ID card scheme; they must know, however, that the start-up costs of any scheme are significant but that they start to be recovered once the scheme is rolled out completely.

Fraud and identity theft—from which I have suffered—greatly concern many people the length and breadth of the country, and for those who have been targeted, it is a terribly worrying time. Any Government should be concerned with addressing benefit fraud and more sinister things, such as people seeking to be involved with terrorist activity, and the ID cards are a method of doing that.

Julian Huppert (Liberal Democrat, Cambridge)

Will the hon. Gentleman explain exactly how the up to 15,000 identity cards that still exist would be effective in controlling either identity fraud or terrorism?

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

The hon. Gentleman, or one of his colleagues, raised a similar point earlier. I still come back to the original reply: this is a relatively early stage. The card has been operational for less than a year—[ Interruption. ] The hon. Gentleman is asking me a specific question. Does he want me to answer it?

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

Order. Perhaps the intervention was slightly wide of the amendments. I advise hon. Members to stick with amendments 1 and 2. I am sure that that is the best way forward.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

There have been a number of examples in only the past few months of false British passports being used across the world, and it is essential that we have a gold standard of identification, not for the benefit of Government but for the benefit and safety of our citizens.

I am sure that Members have noted the evidence provided to the Committee by David Moss. He raised a number of concerns and pointed out some of the pitfalls that the Government might face. Is the Minister retaining the safeguarding identity strategy, which focused on the huge importance of individuals’ identity information and included plans to streamline information use across a number of Departments? That strategy, which was launched only on 23 June 2009, involved many Departments and Government agencies and was designed to deliver a common framework across Government.

David Moss also stated that if ID cards were cancelled the strategy would collapse and the improved efficiencies in Government that were to be delivered would be lost. The Minister has failed to address in the Committee any of the concerns about the effect that cancelling the ID scheme will have on the delivery of public services. In direct contradiction to the Minister, David Moss stated that the Bill will have a considerable impact across Government, yet the Minister continues to deny that the impact will be measurable.

As we move into the future, we must surely have a sensible strategy for protecting the identity of individuals and for ensuring that Government services are efficient and effective. We have also heard that the coalition Government are halting the next generation of biometric passports, in an attempt to save money. We will lose all the benefits that a sensible identity strategy would have provided, and at the same time we are waiting for British citizens’ passports to be downgraded to second-rate passports that will be unacceptable, by themselves, for travel in countries that take security and identity seriously.

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, on what is my first ever Public Bill Committee. I will be reasonably brief because many of my points have already been made my hon. Friend the Member for Easington. I want to pick up on the point that my hon. Friend the shadow Minister raised about fairness, which is at the heart of the amendment. I have been reading what Government Members say about themselves, and apparently we are all progressives now. If that is true, we should recognise that fairness is at the heart of what it is to be a true progressive.

On the point of fairness, people bought the cards in good faith. An earlier intervention referred to card-holders having a passport at the same time—people were eligible to apply for a card if they had a passport or a recently expired one—so some of the people who now have identity cards will not have an up-to-date passport that is within the Identity Cards Act 2006.

Having bought their cards in good faith, people have a legitimate expectation that the Government will honour the expiry date of the identity cards. The Minister and some Government Members suggested this morning that the public should have known that the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were going to form a coalition at the May general election and shelve the policy. That suggestion and the idea that the public should therefore not have bought the cards is arrogant and insulting, and it treats the electorate with contempt. It beggars belief that that can be a suitable argument to put forward for not adequately compensating people who did something that was perfectly legitimate, within the law and passed by an Act of Parliament. It is extremely unfair.

If the Government are going to send out a message to members of the public that they should look at what parties say when they are electioneering, and then act accordingly in terms of the decisions that they make in their personal life, I would tell them to look at what those same parties do when they get into Government. We have the recent example of the reversal of the position on VAT taken by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. Mrs Epstein and other members of the public should draw the conclusion that they should listen to what parties say when they are electioneering and then assume that they are going to do the exact opposite. From the Minister’s case this morning, Mrs Epstein and the other 12,000 or 13,000 people who paid for ID cards could have formed the very reasonable conclusion that, even though they were saying that they were going to get rid of ID cards, they are in fact going to keep them.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

On that point, in relation to the witnesses that we heard on Thursday, particularly Mrs Epstein, is it not conceivable that a group of people could get together in a class action and sue the Government for breach of contract, and would the cost not be more than the estimated £400,000 of making repayment to the people concerned?

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I confess that even though I was a lawyer in my previous life, contract law was not my specialty—it was professional negligence—so I cannot verify the accuracy of that statement. However, it is certainly something to consider.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

Pertinent to that point, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington earlier in the debate, the two letters that the relevant Government Department will have to send out to each of the card-holders about the cancellation of their ID cards will involve significant costs, although we are awaiting confirmation of what the costs will be. Does that not indicate a certain—[ Interruption. ] Were they confirmed this morning? Given that, does it not indicate a disregard for the electorate also, and for the ID card users who would like to maintain their cards in use?

Shabana Mahmood (Labour, Birmingham, Ladywood)

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. That is an important point of principle. We would have liked to have tabled an amendment about compensation and repayment of the £30, but as other hon. Friends have said, that is not possible because of the way in which the Bill is worded, so this is effectively the next best or alternative option. As my hon. Friend the shadow Minister said earlier, we already have in circulation a number of different cards. They are small in number but they are still legal tender when it comes to proving identity. I submit that continuing that in relation to these ID cards would not be any more troublesome than the list of other ID proofs already in circulation.

I simply end on this point. It is extremely arrogant to put forward an argument that people should have guessed and known—effectively have behaved like Mystic Megs—what the Government would do as soon as they got into power. That is very unfair. The tone of this morning’s point seemed to suggest that the people who bought the ID cards, even though the Tories and the Lib Dems were saying that they would get rid of them, were somehow idiotic to have done so. I find that insulting. I do not know whether any of my constituents have bought ID cards, but if they have, I would feel extremely insulted on their behalf. That point needs to be made publicly and put on the record. It is only fair for people to be allowed to retain their cards and use them until the expiry date. That is not too much to ask, and the Government should look into that.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, in my first Public Bill Committee. On the point that has already been raised regarding the amendment and the compromise that we have had to reach, my preferred alternative is for people, who bought the cards in good faith, to be refunded. Unfortunately, seeing that the Government have ruled that out, and in such a mean-spirited manner, the only option we have is to look at whether the card can be continued.

We talked this morning about costs, and I am glad that the Minister has clarified what the cost would have been, which is, I think, £400,000. I am a little sketchy on some of the specifics on that point and on the question of what the cost would be if the cards were to remain valid. Would it be cheaper simply to refund, or to continue? As I am not a member of the Government, I cannot provide that kind of information, nor do I have the answer. I will be grateful for some clarification on that point.

There has been much discussion on whether £30 is much money or not. As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington said, that is a considerable amount of money. As many of my constituents who might have wanted to apply for an ID card know, £30 is half of what they might claim every week in benefits from the Government—half of their income. One might say, and my hon. Friend made this point, that perhaps £30 is too great a sum of money. Perhaps he makes a valid point; I am open-minded on that subject. However, people have paid out that sum of money. If we are looking to cancel the card, the options that we have are either for people to be given their money back, which has unfortunately been ruled out, or allow the cards to remain valid, which I argue for.

People without photo ID experience many difficulties. Photographic ID is required for a whole range of things these days, not simply from Departments, but from many private companies—if one wants to sign for a house, hire a car or open a bank account. We can argue about the rights and wrongs of whether that should be the case, but it is the case; many private companies require it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West also made a good point in saying that although driving licences provide an alternative, it is not open to everyone. Those with specific health problems are not be able to apply for a driving licence.

Additionally, for many people to whom I have spoken in my previous career in managing my own refuge, where identity was important, having proof of identity was vital. One simply could not do certain things without identity. It significantly slowed up the processes of moving on with one’s life, renting a house and claiming state benefits. Identity cards would have been of great use, and it is a real shame that people in that situation, who could have applied for those cards as the system was being rolled out, find that the system has been prematurely ended in a mean-spirited manner by the new Government. When I spoke to those people, I would often suggest that they could apply for a driving licence, as it is a cheaper alternative to a passport. What they rightly ask is why they would apply for a driving licence if they do not have the money to learn to drive, and that is a good point.

Irrespective of the views on ID cards, the pros and cons of which we have touched on broadly, those who are on lower incomes, are transient and will not apply for passports could have found an alternative here. For example, those in the Traveller community, who have great difficulty in proving identity and perhaps do not have utility bills, could have obtained and used photo ID cards under the new system. The problems that I often saw people experiencing included having bills that were not under their names. Often they had fled from other parts of the country. The protection of identity and securing that information is very important. One may argue that delay was inevitable, that perhaps it was just meant to be. Luckily, the people I worked with were in a position to advocate for them and make a case to the housing association, the benefits department and the banks that the people were who they said they were. After all the difficulties that they had experienced to get to where they needed to be, that was just another battle they could not and did not want to face without support.

My hon. Friend the Member for Easington made a good point when he touched on expecting more from the Government. We do expect more from the Government; I certainly would have expected more. I am delighted that the Minister has such great foresight that he was able to predict the outcome of the general election and the formation of the coalition Government. I hope he will use that foresight in his ministerial career as time progresses.

Unfortunately, many people who bought identity cards—as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood pointed out earlier—are not perhaps such avid followers of politics, or perhaps they just thought it was a good idea and that the Government, irrespective of political persuasion, would act in good faith and honour those cards. It is shameful that the new Government, apparently in the spirit of new politics, will neither offer a refund nor allow the cards to remain valid, so that people can honour the contract that they entered into with the Government. We face a compromise here. We are not opposing the vast majority of the Bill, but this is an important point. We accept that the two coalition parties are committed to the Bill; all we ask is a simple compromise that those who in good faith bought the cards are not left out of pocket because the Government have acted in such a mean-spirited manner in denying them access to either a refund or a valid ID card.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

I am grateful for the opportunity to explore some of the issues relating to ID cards and, in particular, to debate clause 2 with regard to members of the public who in good faith purchased the national identity card and, it has been suggested, should have that right removed with no compensation. I appeal on a common-sense basis. I am sure that for many who bought a national ID card, it was a common-sense approach; a secure and easy way in which to identify themselves when required.

I went to collect a parcel from the security depot where I live and on the wall was a list of possible identification that ran to 10 to 15 items, including passport, driving licence, utility bills and various other forms of identification. From a common-sense point of view, I wished I had a national ID card, because I had little on me in terms of ID. I did manage to provide a copy of my lease and a credit card in order to prove my identity. It struck me that a national ID card could be added to the list of viable forms of identification.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

Was the national identity card not on the list?

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

To be honest, I did not study the list. I could not confirm for sure whether it was. I might go back and suggest it to them. Anybody issued with a card through the London City airport scheme might want to use an ID card, if we are successful in arguing for the amendment.

Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow)

Does what the hon. Lady just said not prove why the ID card was unnecessary? Having a lot of different options—utility bills or other forms—makes it easier. Rather than having to carry one official ID, people can carry all sorts of things, thus making it easier to show identification.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for an intervention that proves the opposite case: why should someone be required to carry multiple forms of inconvenient identification, when to carry one card in a wallet would be a common-sense solution? That highlights the lack of common sense in the Bill, which would eradicate this sensible approach to identification for those who require it.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because anyone who ever studies the list at the post office would see that it includes some very insecure documents. It would not take much for someone to find, typically, a handbag with a credit card in it. There is also the hassle of carrying a utility bill. With those two things identity fraud is extremely easy. I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that a secure form of identity would be better all round.

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

Order. That is all very interesting, but it has little to do with amendments 1 and 2, so perhaps the hon. Lady could continue on the amendments.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

I just want to clarify that the postal service that I referred to earlier was not a post office, but simply the depot of my residence. Therefore it was not an official, Government-operated post office. I imagine that at a post office a national ID card is probably listed as a form of acceptable identification. I would be surprised if it were not.

The point that I am making is that for the 15,000 people with national ID cards—and I wish I was one of them, after this morning and other occasions, and generally in the light of all the identification processes that we go through daily—it is very unfair that, apparently from bad will, the cards are to be abolished overnight by Act of Parliament. They were purchased in good faith and I am sure that the 15,000 people who have them would like to continue to use them.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

Ms Epstein raised an option on Tuesday—and ruled it out—of providing a credit that would allow the ID card to run its natural life for 10 years, with a £30 credit on the cost of a new passport. I wonder if my hon. Friend thinks that that would be a reasonable compromise.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

I think that that would be a reasonable compromise and that it should be considered if—and this is the point that I want to deal with first—those 15,000 cards in circulation are not allowed to be used. As a reasonable compromise there should either be a full refund or credit towards the purchase of a passport which, as we explored earlier, will be an issue for quite a few of those people who have national ID cards that will be abolished.

The Government, apart from displaying great lack of respect for the people who decided to purchase a national ID card, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said, underestimate the feelings of the British people about these matters, and the level of upset that will be experienced and expressed if the card is abolished with no alternative or compensation. I am dealing with a case in my constituency of someone who is arguing about much less than £30, being unhappy with the processing of documents for a passport. That has been going on for some time, and the injury that will be caused to the people left without their national ID card, and no compensation, is being severely underestimated.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

On the point about compensation, does my hon. Friend think that it will set a worrying and dangerous precedent if the Government do not honour a previous commitment, and that people expect a little more from the Government than they do from a high street retailer, for example, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington has already suggested? It may be all very well on this occasion, but what is to stop the Government in future saying, “You should have known better. We all knew this was going to happen. It’s your fault.” That is what Government Members are saying to people who purchased ID cards.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

I absolutely agree. That goes to the crux of the matter. Government Members appear not to understand that the British public do not look at the Government in terms of party colours. They might go to the polls and vote on the basis of partisan interest or belief, but it is not by party or composition that they hold the Government to account. To the majority of the British public, the Government owe a duty and a responsibility to their citizens. It will come as a great shock and a great insult to anyone who holds an ID card that the Government feel it fair and just to abolish the scheme, without any recompense to people for whom £30 is a significant sum of money.

I appreciate that the future of biometric data and passports is not necessarily covered by the clause, but it is a subject which the Minister has shed little light on today. I am genuinely concerned, as are my hon. Friends and many members of the British public, that simply to abolish identity cards and the national identity register, which supports the biometric data held on those cards, is short-sighted.

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

Order. We will come to clause 3 later, which deals with the register.

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

The point being in relation to clause 2—

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

The point being that the hon. Lady is supposed to confine her remarks to the amendments that we are discussing. She can catch my eye when we come to clause 3. Do you have any more to say on the amendments?

Catherine McKinnell (Labour, Newcastle upon Tyne North)

My final point is on clause 2, and it relates to card-holders being allowed to hold on to their identity cards until their expiry date. The amendment raises the compromise that the Government could make to allow the national identity database to remain in place—to hold the identity of those 15,000 individuals in abeyance—until the Government finally decide their policy on biometric data.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

First, I congratulate all the hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches in Committee today. I also congratulate you, Mr Streeter, on your characteristic generosity of spirit in allowing the debate to range heroically beyond the limits of the amendments. In the spirit of general helpfulness, I warn hon. Members that on future occasions other Chairmen may not be as generous.

The hon. Member for Bolton West made a point, which other hon. Members also brought up, about those who are genuinely economically struggling, for whom £30 is a significant sum of money, which is a serious point. I point out that the scheme was introduced by the Government in the Identity Cards Act 2006, which the new Labour Members presumably supported from outside the House—the scheme was eventually introduced in 2009, so their Government had three and a half years to think about it. Far from implementing means-testing, as the hon. Member for Easington has suggested, they decided that there would be a flat fee and that everyone would have to pay. On top of that, they decided that they would give away thousands of these cards for free, in an attempt to foist the scheme more quickly on to the unwilling British public. They did not, however, choose people who were particularly short of money. They chose people who worked at airports, so I will not take any moral lectures about how the poorest people are being deprived. We have discussed somebody scrimping and saving to put their last £30 on an identity card. My point is that no one in this country would think that that was the most essential use of their last £30, if they were genuinely struggling—it is an absurd argument.

Grahame Morris (Labour, Easington)

On the pilot scheme that took place at Manchester and London City airports, my understanding is that the aim was not to identify a group of poor people. That was an air gate. The measure tried to address—[Interruption.] The scheme was multifaceted. It addressed the integrity of the security of the country. Given that the scheme was being grown sequentially, that was a sensible starting point.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

The hon. Gentleman has made my point for me. The previous Government did not care about any of that and Labour has dug up this argument in desperation. His other quasi-valid point is whether we will lose anything by implementing these measures. At our second oral evidence session, Mr Fazackerley, who was representing Manchester airport, said:

“Personally, I was a fan of the scheme and thought that it was helpful”—

so we know where he was coming from—

“but that is not to say that you cannot achieve the same thing by other means.”––[Official Report, Identity Documents Public Bill Committee, 29 June 2010; c. 29, Q70.]

Mr Fazackerley is on the record as a fan of the scheme, and even he admits that all of the scheme’s security benefits, which are what he cares about—airports need to care about security—may be achieved by other means. That is an eloquent point made by a fan of the scheme about how pointless it is.

Bridget Phillipson (Labour, Houghton and Sunderland South)

I do not dispute what Mr Fazackerley said—this may be outside the Committee’s remit—but will the Minister outline what those other means might be?

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I do not mean to detain the Committee unnecessarily, but I suggest that the hon. Lady reads the exchanges that followed Mr Fazackerley’s comment. It occurred to me at the time, as it occurred to my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, who asked the following question, that, as Mr Fazackerley went on to say, airports may easily achieve the same objectives by using passports and other such documents. If the hon. Lady reads the evidence again, she will see that Mr Fazackerley was eloquent on that point.

On the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch, I particularly enjoyed her introduction, in which she said that it is not her job to provide solutions to the problems. I thought, “Welcome to opposition.” Many of us were in opposition for many years. She has accepted that her proposals may not be practical or workable, but she made them anyway. The amendment seeks to retain the last vestiges of the costly ID card scheme, but in doing so would impose further massive expense on the taxpayer. That point was raised by the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, who wants more detail on the cost of carrying on with the scheme.

If the Committee accepted the amendments, what would be the cost? The amendments would require the taxpayer to meet the cost of maintaining the identity card infrastructure for the next 10 years for fewer than 15,000 card-holders. The current operation costs about £5 million a year, plus administrative costs, which suggests that the amendments would require the taxpayer to spend between £50 million and £60 million over 10 years for fewer than 15,000 card-holders, 3,000 of whom got the cards for free.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I grant that what the Minister says would be the case, if that approach were the only solution. We Labour Members recognise that such schemes need to be run in the most cost-effective and simple way. It is easy for the Government to come up with the most expensive method of implementing the amendment, but we believe that there are cheaper alternatives, such as migrating data to the passport database or allowing the cards to remain valid without the back-up of a database; that would make them far less useful to card-holders, but it would at least give some recompense. It is not for me to work up that detail—that is the Government’s job—but coming up with one expensive solution is disingenuous.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I am glad that the hon. Lady admits that the provisions outlined in her amendments would be colossally expensive. She has said that we might therefore implement them by removing the database, so that the card effectively becomes a piece of plastic with no back-up at all. Several times today, I have distinctly heard her talk about the importance of security and how the cards would support it. She must admit that having a national identity card without any back-up would be pointless. That would be a less secure means of identifying someone than a photographic driving licence, and certainly less secure than a passport, or anything such as that. The identity cards would not be practical in any way.

If we wanted to retain the national identity register, we would need to continue holding the fingerprints of 15,000 randomly selected, innocent people. We would also run the risk of seeing diminishing use by the small number of card-holders over that 10-year period, and little or no engagement by travel operators, carriers and other agencies, which would not become accustomed to dealing with the cards at all.

There are practical points to consider, such as what would happen if someone lost their card and asked for a replacement. Presumably, in order to replace it effectively, we would need to keep the national identity register.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The Minister is now straying into the realm of fantasy. The amendment states that existing cards should remain valid until their expiry date, and there are ways in which that could be achieved. He is now suggesting that we discuss replacement cards—something that is not in the amendment and is not a proposal—and I would be glad if he were to respond to the point about migration to the passport database, which is sensible.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I have responded to it. There are two ways in which such a proposal could proceed: either it would be fantastically expensive and an appalling waste of public money, or it would be completely pointless, because the card would be a piece of plastic that did not relate to anything else.

The hon. Lady wants to relate the card to the passport database, but as she knows, the vast majority of people who have identity cards also have passports, so that would be completely pointless as well. We would be doing the taxpayer a major disservice, as well as giving card-holders false hope that the ID card would serve some useful function, or that they could reasonably expect their cards to be recognised by anyone who wanted to verify their identity in nine or 10 years’ time, although so few had been issued and they had never become part of national life. Anyone going into a post office in 2019 and saying, “Do you remember the national identity card? Here is mine—can I take this parcel away?” would find it difficult, and it would be much easier and more practical to use their passport, driving licence, or utility bills, or any of the other options.

As the Opposition have sensibly decided not to oppose the Bill in principle, we have to assume that it is likely to proceed through its remaining stages and reach the statute book. The amendments represent slightly desperate attempts to cling to the vestiges of the scheme for the best part of 10 years. That would be completely unrealistic and would not even serve the interests of those who have bought the cards. For those reasons, I urge the Committee to reject the amendment.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

The debate has been interesting, and we have heard good arguments from Labour Members about basic issues such as fairness and decency—things that I mentioned in my opening comments. It is sad that the Government take that attitude. We have heard about the people—pensioners, non-drivers and disabled people—who would have benefited from the scheme and who will suffer because the scheme is likely to be scrapped. Some of the 15,000 people who have the cards now may be in those categories—I am not in a position to know exactly who took up the card—and the Government should not treat people in such a way.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood, who was rightly indignant about the Government’s attitude to a number of our constituents, and who took issue with the Government’s tone. It is sad that we see a lot of nodding dogs on the Government side; we have heard nothing at all on the amendment from a number of Government Members.

Several hon. Members rose—

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

Oh, the nodding dogs have risen to their feet.

Guy Opperman (Conservative, Hexham)

I am delighted to respond, nodding or otherwise. Will the hon. Lady answer the question that I raised earlier about why the previous Government did not insert a clause into the application form for an ID card that provided for repayment on cancellation? The contract between the previous Government and the companies that are being reimbursed must contain a contractual indemnity.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

I have a little lesson for the hon. Gentleman: when one implements an Act of Parliament—I was a Member in 2005 when the legislation was discussed in Parliament; it became law in 2006—legally it is not permissible to tie the hands of a future Government, which clearly we have not done. The Government do not think “Ha, how can we tie in this legislation for ever and ever, in case any future Government want to change it?” Nor do the Government assume that their policy will be junked at the first available opportunity in such a brutal fashion, which is the key point. As the hon. Gentleman raised that point, I shall alert my colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench to the fact that we should seek to insert a similar clause in any Bill before the House over the next five years, which would ensure that the Government were tied in to their own suggestion. It is an interesting point which, in debate, may well be opposed by the Government, and for good reason.

Steve McCabe (Labour, Birmingham, Selly Oak)

Surely the real problem is that we could not have foreseen what a mean-minded bunch of money-grubbers would assume power.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

My hon. Friend makes the point in his inimitable fashion. I agree with the sentiment, if not necessarily the language; the measures are mean.

We have heard a lot about how useful the cards could have been, and the existing cards would have continued to be useful to the 15,000 people who had them. What we are asking is limited; Labour may not be in government, but we are tabling an amendment to allow the cards to continue. If the Government were minded to do that in a cheaper way than the Minister has proposed, that would be possible. It is sad that he has added up the biggest figures that he could find to come up with a big demand, so that it seems as if the Opposition are insisting that this large amount of public money is spent. That is not the point. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North talked about common sense, and that is what the amendment is all about. Some 15,000 people have cards that they paid for in good faith, and our proposal is proportionate.

The Minister has stated that we are not going to vote against the Bill in its entirety, and that is because we have taken a reasonable view. The new coalition Government have a mandate—perhaps neither party managed to obtain a mandate on its own, but they have come together, in a fashion. The Bill is the only thing that they have managed to agree on so far, so this is the only piece of legislation before the House. In recognition of that mandate, of the value of democracy in this country, and of the British people’s verdict, we are not being gesture politicians. Instead, we are trying to propose a practical amendment that ensures fairness across the board.

There are those who did not have the foresight to come along to the debate at University college, where a room of some 30 people heard what the Minister had to say, or to any other debate in which he took part; they chose to get on with their lives instead. Perhaps new Members have come here under the impression that people on the street recognise shadow Ministers and rush up and ask them, “Shadow Minister, what will your policy be when you are in government again?” I hate to disabuse the Minister, or any other hon. Member, but it was not the case that the Minister was so well known and his words so well weighed by the average citizen in Manchester, or London. I would love the Minister to disprove that point, but we must not get an over-inflated sense of our individual importance, or our importance in the Government. Many of our constituents are far less politically engaged than we are, which is understandable, but some are very detached. As has been said, why should people have to be so involved in the political process that they know every word that the Minister said when he was a shadow Minister, and make their assumptions accordingly?

The Opposition are in favour of fairness and decency, and we want to support those who took up cards. We do not like and we regret the “I told you so” attitude of the Minister. He may have been in opposition for 13 years—he has been champing at the bit to become a Home Office Minister—but it is in his power now to do something positive for the British public that reflects the trust that he would like to build with them. It is important that any Minister in the Home Department has a relationship of trust with the public. As my hon. Friends have said, this measure would break that bond.

The Minister discussed the airport pilot scheme, but we should not conflate that with other issues, because that will be discussed under new clause 2. However, a number of points were made on that. I refer the Minister to a speech that I made at the Social Market Foundation, in which I talked about the 20% of people without passports or identification, and how we should tackle that issue. There was work under way to look at support for those people, and discussions were held with several bodies representing, for example, ex-prisoners, women victims of domestic violence, and people who have no biographical footprint. Those discussions were held to see how the identity card could best be used to support them and to reach the people who do not have a form of ID—the 20% or so of people who are dispossessed and who cannot get bank accounts and so on. That is the world we live in. The Minister may not like it; I know that, from his civil libertarian point of view, he would love to return to the 1950s, when ID involved photographs, maybe the odd signature here or there and the trust of the local beat bobby, who would know who you were. We do not live in that world now, and the Minister needs to wake up to that fact.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

The hon. Lady is right: I am a civil libertarian. I read her address to the Social Market Foundation, and she makes an interesting point. There are people in society who clearly find it more difficult than most to establish their identity to the outside world. It always struck me that addressing that problem would have been a much more sensible and creative thing for the previous Government to have done, rather than their saying that the way to solve the problem is to make sure that 100% of British citizens have to pay a sum of money for an intrusive database. In a sense, she has solved her own problem, and shown where her Government went wrong originally.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

We are in danger of straying from the amendment, but as the point has been raised, it is important to stress once again that the scheme was not compulsory—we never mentioned 100% of people. It was a case of, “If you want to pay, you get the card. If you don’t, you don’t.” It is important to look at what benefits a scheme can bring when it is up and running.

The Minister spoke, quite personally, about synthetic indignation. There is nothing synthetic on Labour’s side of the Committee. We are here representing our constituents, and we have the privilege of challenging the Government on behalf of the people of Britain, even if it is a small number of people who are affected—later we will discuss clauses that affect even fewer people—by the mean way in which the Government are demolishing the ID card policy.

In our consideration of clause 2, the Minister has discussed the lack of security. He mentioned halting biometric passports; once again, I am not clear how he proposes to replace the security of fingerprints in documents. The Minister’s answers have been poor. He has backed up his own arguments, rather than genuinely looked at the facts. I think that the British public will see that, and I am sad that the Government will not move a centimetre, or even a millimetre, on that point.

Gary Streeter (Conservative, South West Devon)

The Minister was correct that I showed a certain amount of generosity in relation to contributions on the earlier amendment, partly because for many it was their first contribution in Committee. I have no intention of being so generous in relation to the clause stand part debate, particularly as we have already discussed clause 2, which is about the mechanics of cancellation.

Damian Green (Conservative, Ashford)

I will, of course, accept your injunction, Mr Streeter. I will make a narrow speech and avoid being tempted by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch.

The clause sets out the timeline for scrapping the ID cards scheme and recognises the need for a practical approach that gives existing card-holders sufficient notice of the cancellation of the card. It provides that cards will no longer be issued on or after the day on which the Bill is passed. As I have indicated, we have already taken steps to minimise future demand for cards, and we have put new applications on hold pending consideration of the Bill by Parliament. The clause will enable the entire process to be dismantled by removing the statutory requirement on the Secretary of State to issue ID cards.

The clause also provides that existing cards will no longer be valid one month after enactment. That is a sufficient period of notice for card-holders, who will be notified in writing at the enactment of the Bill. Existing card-holders have already been notified in writing, at their registered address, on the introduction of the Bill. The Directgov and Identity and Passport Service websites have been updated to reflect the current position.

We are not proposing that after the scheme ends the existing cards have to be returned, which would be costly and unnecessary. The card will have no legal status, so requiring its return would be only a bureaucratic exercise. Card-holders will be advised to destroy the card safely, as with an expired bank or credit card. If the card-holder chooses not to destroy the card, they should keep it in a safe place. The card will not be valid for travel purposes, and no verification services will be provided by the IPS following enactment. The decision not to recall the cards will not create any significant risk. If such a risk existed, it would be outweighed by the cost, bureaucracy and inconvenience to card-holders of returning the cards.

In writing to card-holders about the introduction of the Bill to Parliament, we have advised those who may travel on their ID card to use their passport instead, and to consider renewing their passport before travelling, if it has expired. Although there are fewer than 15,000 cards in circulation, we want to avoid potential travel difficulties for card-holders who may travel in Europe over the coming months. The IPS is in contact with key stakeholders in the travel industry and with national and international border agencies, and it will continue to keep them informed of progress.

If an ID card-holder is unable to return from abroad once their card is cancelled, they will have to obtain a valid passport or emergency travel document from the British embassy or consular post. As is the case now, UK Border Agency staff will exercise discretion when someone with a cancelled ID card turns up at a British port. Just as if someone arrived with an expired passport, the immigration officer has the discretion to admit that person, provided that the officer is satisfied about their identity.

Meg Hillier (Labour, Hackney South and Shoreditch)

We have debated this measure at length, but I have some specific points on the whole clause, which we have sadly failed to amend.

The Minister has not explained why the period of one month was chosen. That seems a short time in which to get out information—it could easily cut across someone’s holiday. I am slightly reassured by his suggestion that some flexibility may be shown at the border, but that is inconsistent with the chosen period of one month, as the card scheme might have been wound down over a year. Someone might have travelled abroad on their card—having left before the election, indeed—to live or work in Europe, and they might not travel back until next year. It may be the first time that they do that. I forget the figures, but certainly many young people travel and live abroad, and expatriates in Spain might actively have sought a card and might be in such a position. They might not visit their UK address, and one can see how letters might go astray when they are forwarded to an address abroad—notifications have to be sent to the UK address, because only that information is held on the database.

I am only slightly reassured by the Minister’s comments about flexibility, which seem a bit vague and worrying. If someone turns up at a port and finds that they cannot use their card, they have to go to the embassy, which is incredibly cumbersome. What measures is the Minister putting in place to ensure that that process is made easy? Will he explain why the period of one month was chosen? I know that he, personally, is in a tearing hurry to become the poster man for all the people who want ID cards to be abolished; perhaps, it will be his epitaph—sooner rather than later, if the rumours we hear are true. Some card-holders may, for whatever reason, put the letter to one side and not appreciate its meaning, or may just try to use the card once the system and the database have gone. What sanction will the Minister apply to someone who tries to use a card after the scheme is over?

The Minister touched on some of the costs involved in cancelling the scheme. He indicated that the IPS was in touch with ports, carriers, and others who might need to see or use the card. Having recently been in a position similar to the Minister’s, I know that the system is not cost free. Only a few months ago, we were alerting ports and carriers to the validity of the card, and it will be expensive to go through a similar process again. Will he give us—as we are at only the Committee stage—a broad-brush costing, with the details to follow? He may well say that the measure will be part of ordinary, everyday business; it will not be, because it is a new instruction that will not be part of the usual business of the IPS, and it will cost money.

That covers international travel, but other areas will be affected. For example, I deal with the National Federation of Retail Newsagents and its London committee. Such bodies provide information to their members about the ID card. They will not look at the Home Office website to find that the card does not exist; they will still have leaflets in their shops and buildings; and they still want to recognise the scheme. Cancelling the card after a month will cause a muddle, so will the Minister consider introducing the measure more slowly and, therefore, more surely? That would ensure that there is no confusion about whether the card still holds. Our position remains that we want to amend the clause, but sadly we lost that vote. As that failed, we will not formally oppose the clause. I am sad, however, that the scheme is being strangled at birth, before it has had a chance to prove itself.

The rest of the debate is in Hansard.