Identity Documents Bill

My Lords, we do not have a socioeconomic profile of those who bought cards. We have other profiles but not that one as we did not inquire about people’s incomes. However, I do not think that the public are very interested in the Government spending a further £400,000 on refunds. Unfortunately, the sum is not £360,000 as an administrative overhead is incurred in refunding the £30 fees, which themselves amount to £360,000. You might say that £400,000 is not a significant sum in the previous Government’s overall scheme of spending on ID cards. Indeed, I hear noble Lords present saying that. However, I am afraid that the Government maintain the contrary view. It is a significant amount and, frankly, noble Lords opposite have not provided a good reason why a refund should be given. Instead they accuse the coalition of being mean-spirited. If mean-spirited means extricating ourselves from an expensive failure at the least possible cost to the taxpayer, I think that we are doing the right thing. We do not accept that yet more money has to be spent on ID cards. I am happy to ensure that the details of how we extricate ourselves from the ID card mess are placed in the public domain. As the Immigration Minister made clear on Report in the other place—I again confirm this—a Written Ministerial Statement will be made to the House on completion of the destruction process. I will place a copy of the planned destruction process referred to in the amendment in the Library. The appropriate place for reporting costs and savings associated with scrapping the ID card scheme is in the annual report published by the chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service. We will do that. It will also provide details of the cancellation scheme and the figures provided will be subject to independent auditing. It has been mentioned that there is a contractual relationship with the suppliers of the cards, which we inherited and, under law, we cannot get out of. We will have to honour that. I fear that that is a different issue from the question of the £30. The coalition made clear its position on refunds at the time of the 2006 Act—we did not support it—and during the election campaign. It is simply not true to say that this was tucked away in manifestos to be seen only by Westminster anoraks. It was widely reported and commented on. It was widely known that the coalition would scrap the cards. The approach to refunds was also covered in the newspapers. It was not a secret. It was referred to in television and radio programmes. It was an ongoing story.