Identity Cards Bill

I am prepared to accept the Government’s assurances that the driving licence will not be a designated document, but it is clear that the identity card and the operation of the database will go ahead. The Government are determined to use those powers, at least for the time being, until the costs emerge. They might think twice about it after that. We do not know the extent to which other Departments, or even devolved Assemblies and Parliaments, will use the database to deliver services. The costs are not included in the Government’s £584 million assessment. The UK Computing Research Committee has commented on the document on the assessment of technologies needed for a national ID card scheme. It says that the assessment is not objective, because the authors have an interest in supplying the ID technologies. Most independent experts are dubious about the Government’s scope and ability to deliver. They include the London School of Economics—whose work the Government have rubbished without justification, as we learned from the letter from Brian Gladwyn to the Prime Minister—and the UK Computing Research Committee, as well as other organisations dealing with computing. I do not think we should spend vast amounts of public money on a scheme that is highly dubious, and whose benefits, let alone costs, have not been assessed. I tabled a parliamentary question to the Department of Health on the cost of people gaining access to health services when they were not entitled to do so. The Department had no idea of the cost. We do not yet know whether it will go along with the scheme, but the Minister has said that it would benefit the NHS. I am prepared to bet that the £584 million will prove to be only a fraction of the eventual cost if the Government insist on the scheme. The proposed six-monthly estimates are welcome. However, the Government will perhaps end up spending billions of pounds before realising the error of this approach. Instead, they should opt for the solution that all other European countries are opting for: documents that have biometrics on the card, and appropriate security precautions that are an improvement—as they will have to be—on those currently available. The Government should drop their obsession with this ridiculous national identity register, which will be costly, has severe implications for civil liberties and will prove a honey pot for international criminals and terrorists. Rather than protecting our identities, such a register will lead to everybody facing the threat of identity theft. When I spoke on Second Reading, I expressed concern about the security of biometrics and the ability of individuals to apply for more than one document. That fear remains and the Government have had to react to such criticisms by greatly increasing the number of biometrics to be stored. Originally, they planned to have only iris recognition and facial recognition; now, they have been forced down the route of including 10 fingerprints. Even if the system proves 99 per cent. accurate, there will still be 48,000 false matches in a database of 48 million people. It will not be the ordinary citizen who will apply for multiple ID cards using the same biometrics. However, the system will not be able to know that the same biometrics have been duplicated, but with different identities. Terrorists, money launderers and international criminals will be willing to hack into the system, and they will be patient. The police computer system is regularly abused from the inside by police officers giving information to journalists; other systems have been hacked into. Staff working in computer centres could be bribed or blackmailed into handing over sensitive data. What will happen, for example, if somebody changes the address on my database record and puts in a request for an audit trail? Such information will then be delivered securely to the alternative address. The implications are horrendous. Chips on the card will allow people to be followed wherever they go, unless the security that nations such as America are building into—