Identity Cards Bill

The primary concern is about a piece of data giving access to other databases—for example, driving licence number or national insurance number. Such pieces of information are the access keys to other databases. I shall return to that in detail, because there is expert evidence that causes concern among people who know a great deal about that. Earlier, in Home Office questions, the Home Secretary made the dubious claim that the Passport Agency has been a tremendous success, which was sort of reiterated in an unqualified way by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. The Home Secretary must have far different criteria for success from me and the rest of the country, who have seen many millions of our money squandered on that. It overran significantly and led to great inconvenience for a large number of people. As I said to the right hon. Gentleman, four Government agencies have seen projects with a total budget of nearly £9 billion record spectacular failures, racking up a combined overspend of £33.9 billion. Even simple databases are often beyond the Home Office. Why should we imagine that it is capable of setting up the very complex register required by the Bill in an acceptable and workable way? If it goes wrong, that may manifest itself in problems and delays in getting the designated document. How much longer will it take to get a passport if we add the ID card requirements? Once we have renewed our passports, we are required to keep the Government informed of any changes. We will have to tell the Government every time we change our address, on pain of a fine of £1,000, which is quite a lot of money.