Ian Murray

This is about reconnecting citizens with Government. Everyone will have constituents coming to every one of their surgeries with a form they cannot fill out, a piece of maladministration in public services, something they cannot access or a difficulty in getting access to benefits. There are still people in this country who are entitled to huge parts of the benefit system but do not claim. There are people who will need this for verification of identity and their age in buying alcohol—all those things that are a big inconvenience for people. This is about reconnecting citizens with Government—modernising government, as we have heard from the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer). It is about making sure that the Government can be effective and can be in the digital age with a digital population. This happens in many other countries around the world. I do not have time to run through all of them now, but hon. Members can look them up. Let me take on two issues before I finish. The first is data and security. This is a federated data system, so I say to the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) that his idea of bringing it all together in one database is the wrong option. The data does not move; it sits with the Government Department, and the digital ID system, or whatever system is used, goes into those datasets and brings out affirmative or otherwise—