Identity Cards Bill

Well, perhaps the Minister can intervene and tell me by how much that cost of prevention will be reduced and what savings the consumer and the citizen will gain if the new system is introduced. I have paused, but the Minister is staying shtum—that is okay. The list goes on. The Finance and Leasing Association estimates that "““identity fraud arising from the provision of motor finance””" costs £14 million. Does the Minister seriously expect an identity card system to stop that sort of fraud? Does he expect every second-hand car dealer that pulls out a set of financial agreements to be signed in a portakabin somewhere to use a biometric scanner before allocating them to the person who has come in to purchase a car? That would be the only way in which the ID system and the biometric register could solve that problem. It is highly unlikely that anything approaching £1.7 billion will be saved. Earlier, the Minister suggested a lower annual saving. He suggested a range, but even the low end of his forecast would be achieved only if all the measures that I have described were implemented. Such savings could not be achieved within the set-up costs and the ongoing running costs of the system covering passports and ID cards alone that the Secretary of State spoke about earlier. It is certain that the real cost to the citizen will be far higher than the costs that the Government have already specified—the running costs and the set-up costs, which are still unclear. Those costs will be higher than has been suggested, because if identity cards and the central biometric database are to solve problems of fraud, scanners linked to the database will be required in every shop, supermarket and filling station, and in every bank, building society and insurance broker. The police will need portable scanners in their police cars, and insurance assessors likewise. The costs of all that would be fully passed on to the consumer. It is incumbent on the Government to tell us not their set-up costs and the Home Office running costs, but the real and full costs of the measure, including a best-guess estimate of the costs to the private sector. It is incumbent on Ministers to tell us whether businesses will be expected to bear the costs or whether they can pass them on wholly to the citizen, or by how much the Government will have to increase taxes to pay for the scheme if they believe that ending some of these fraudulent measures would be worth while and cost effective. Either way, with a project of such a scale and complexity, we cannot be expected to buy a pig in a poke. I want to support a robust announcement of the costs—the detailed development and running costs, including those in the private sector—but that is not an option in either amendment. However, Lords amendment No. 70 is more robust, not least because amendment (a) in lieu has the 10-year rule, which would allow large hikes in capital expenditure or early revenue to be averaged out and hidden over the 10 years for which the figures are reported. If we vote on that—it is not yet clear that we will—the Scottish National party will back the Lords amendment. I hope that the Minister and others on the Labour Benches will take cognisance of the feeling on the subject. We need genuine detailed information up front. We need no obfuscation. We need to be clear of the set-up costs, not just for the Home Office, but for the whole scheme, and of the running costs not just for the Home Office, but for every Department. In the private sector, we need best guesstimates so that we understand exactly what the cost to the citizen and consumer will be if the identity fraud played up by the Government is genuinely to be tackled.