Downing Street Says

Asked if Keith Vaz was right to say that the Prime Minister was leaving himself "wriggle-room" over the implementation of ID cards, the PMS replied that the position on ID cards had not changed. All the Prime Minister was doing today, as on the Marr programme and in the Observer at the weekend, was just setting out what the existing policy was.

Asked if the most recent timetable for implementation was still going to be adhered to, the PMS replied that there had been no change in policy or timetable in relation to ID cards.

Put that the Home Office website said very specifically that there would be compulsory identity cards after a vote in Parliament, and asked if it was still the Prime Minister’s view that identity cards would be compulsory subject to that vote, the PMS replied that it was the Government’s position that there would need to be a vote in Parliament before we had compulsory ID cards.

Asked if the Government would be timetabling such a vote, the PMS replied that at the moment the situation had not arisen. We were introducing ID cards for foreign nationals, at some point in the future there would be a vote in Parliament as to whether or not there should be compulsory ID cards for everybody. But the position was set out very clearly in the Strategic Action Plan for the National Identity Scheme that was published in December 2006. That was the most up to date position of the Government, and that remained the position.

Put that the confusion had been caused by the Prime Minister saying that this was the policy, but it was a matter for Parliament to decide after we had looked at the voluntary system in place, which seemed to leave doubt, the PMS replied that by definition the vote in Parliament would happen after identity cards had been introduced for foreign nationals. So no doubt one of the factors taken into account by Members of Parliament when voting would be the implementation of the ID card scheme up to that point. Just so everyone was clear, every time he had heard the Prime Minister talk about ID cards either publicly or privately, the formulation that he had been using in recent days had been the formulation he had used.

Put that the suggestion that the rolling out to foreign nationals this year would be a pilot for rolling out to UK citizens on a voluntary basis from 2009 was wrong, and that the rolling out to UK nationals was not dependent on the success of rolling out to foreign nationals, the PMS replied the position on this had not changed.

Asked if there were any plans for further consultations with other public sector workers, the PMS replied that there would be further discussions with other public sectors, but it would not be sensible for those negotiations to be conducted in public. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister yesterday set out the direction for future policy and it was now a matter for individual departments, depending on their own particular circumstances, to decide how best to take this forward in their sector.

Asked if we would be expecting individual departments to be contacting the relevant unions involved to set out the plans, the PMS replied that we would expect individual departments to take a view as to whether or not multi-year deals would be appropriate in their sector.

Put that we were therefore not expecting this to happen for all public sector workers, the PMS replied that as the Prime Minister said yesterday, clearly there might be circumstances in which it would not be appropriate. But it was the intention that multi-year deals should be more prevalent in the public sector, that was the nature of the Chancellor’s intervention at Cabinet yesterday and his letter round Cabinet, and the messages that both he and the Prime Minister were setting out yesterday.

Asked in what forum those discussions would take place, as most of public sector pay discussions were done third hand by review bodies for example, the PMS replied that we were obviously talking about a very large number of people, it was a large section of the economy, it was very complex, and arrangement would be different in each sector. But there were lots of circumstances where departments were dealing direct with unions as well as the relevant pay review bodies.

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» Wednesday, January 9, 2008

ID Cards

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