Mike Wood

The Minister read his speech beautifully, and with a straight face. In September, the Prime Minister tossed this mandatory digital ID on to the table as a classic dead cat distraction, purely to keep Andy Burnham off the front pages as the Labour party conference started. Now it is left to a junior Minister to come to Parliament to explain why the policy that the Prime Minister spent months saying was absolutely vital is being hollowed out. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to his new position last Friday, but I suspect he is quickly learning that the price of his red box is to have to go out on a very thin limb and put his own credibility on the line, only for those higher up in Government to rev the chainsaw, leaving him exposed, with only the flimsiest of pretences to protect his dignity—the pretence that this policy is still a going concern. In less than four months, the policy has gone from dead cat to dead parrot. Like Monty Python’s pet shop owner, the Minister is asking us all to deny what we can see clearly with our own eyes. He does everything short of inviting us to admire its beautiful plumage, but this policy has passed on. My questions for the Minister are: do the Government still expect digital ID, in this new form, to cost £1.8 billion? Is it going to be mandatory or not? What on earth does the taxpayer get for that money if people do not even have to have it? Above all, when is he going to finally face facts, stop spending billions on this zombie boondoggle that is wandering aimlessly in search of a problem to solve, and save taxpayers’ money? This is a dead policy.