The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mike Penning)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on securing the debate. This has been an ongoing campaign for him and other colleagues, to the extent that there have been something like 56 letters from MPs, which have been responded to by Cabinet Ministers, particularly my right hon. Friends the Transport Secretary and the Business Secretary.
I am more than happy to meet my hon. Friend and a delegation from the industry to discuss this matter, but that might be the only part of this debate in which he will smile at me, because I think we are going to disagree on some points. I apologise for that, but I have to do what I think is right. I am not going to get into a debate about the number of jobs that might be lost on the high street, which he discussed, but the figure seems to change with each letter on this issue. I am not deriding his mathematics, but the industry moves around on this point. As the Minister responsible to the public in relation to the DVLA, I have to look at several things, one of which is the cost to the public of something that they are required to have. The photo ID driving licence has been in place for many years—since 1998. We also need to look at the new technology that has come forward. One thing that my hon. Friend has not picked up on this evening is the issue of fraud with driving licences and passports, which I shall spend some time discussing.
Since 1998, image quality has become more and more important, particularly with digital technology. The police, the courts and the Driving Standards Agency, the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency and the DVLA in my Department have made it a priority to increase the quality of the photographs that are produced as evidence of someone’s ID when they want to procure, among other things, a driving licence with their photograph on it. As you may be aware, Mr Speaker, in recent years we have moved from black-and-white photographs to colour technology with driving licences, but technology continues to move forward. Digital photos are cheaper and much better in quality than they used to be and the secure management of such electronic technology becomes more and more important.
As my hon. Friend said, we have in recent years looked closely at how we can improve the quality of the photograph as part of the system of proving the identity of the person applying for the driving licence. Some 15% of this system is dealt with on the web, and it goes straight through to the DVLA on a regular basis, and that figure continues to increase. I shall come back to the significance of that figure in a moment.
In the past 18 months, the Post Office service—the contract is to be launched in March, as my hon. Friend said—has taken 35% of the market in photographs for driving licences. That leaves 50% still being done in the old-fashioned way, by capturing the photograph and the photograph then being used in, normally paper, documents.
Why are the Government doing this? As my hon. Friend rightly said, it comes down to cost. There are enormous savings for DVLA if the photograph can be captured and transported electronically on to the system immediately and in the most cost-efficient way. The DVLA is funded by people paying fees, and the fees charged for a driving licence or other DVLA service reflect our costs. Naturally, in these difficult economic times, we have been trying to drive down costs as far as possible. That is therefore a significant factor.
Another significant factor of which I was unaware until I took this job is fraud. Recently in the press I have stated my concern about fraud when foreign driving licences are exchanged for British driving licences, but when I went to the DVLA fraud unit in Swansea, on one of my first ministerial visits, I was amazed to discover the extent to which members of the public fraudulently try to obtain a British driving licence. I accept that a British driving licence is a valuable item, because it can be used as ID and for many different purposes. Even though it was not designed as a means of identification, it is often used as one—for example, a person needs a driving licence to hire a vehicle, because it is regarded as an entitlement to drive as well as proof of age and address.
There are frequent attempts—hundreds every day—by people to obtain a British driving licence using a fraudulent photograph. They employ a vast range of methods, of which cut and paste is only one. We pick up as many such attempts as possible—we cannot guarantee to get all of them—and one option for us is digital scanning. One of the great benefits we have seen in the past couple of months from having a direct link to web or being able to scan at a post office directly into the DVLA database is that very soon after the application has been made, particularly at night when we can use computer downtime, we can compare the scanned photograph with the millions of photographs kept on the database. We do that not because we suspect that everyone is attempting to obtain a driving licence fraudulently, but because we know that a large number of people apply using multiple names and addresses. We can do that with the new technology, whereas the older technology makes it very difficult.
Let me take this opportunity to say that we will pursue people who apply fraudulently for a driving licence through the courts, because making such an application is a criminal offence.
Even with the new technology, the market stands at 50:50. We have no intention of stopping people from choosing to use the traditional—I prefer to say old-fashioned—method. They can carry on doing that. Are we promoting the digital side of it? Yes, we are—of course we are—and that is why the contract is being issued. It is imperative that we are honest about that and that we ensure the public continue to have a choice wherever possible. There will be a market for both older technology and web facilities. All the evidence we have seen at DVLA, especially as we roll out the VED car tax arrangements, is that more is being done online and less in person.
My hon. Friend asked whether there will be a continuation of the older method. Yes. He asked whether I would consider delaying the bidding process in March. We have done a lot of work on that, and I do not intend to delay the March contract launch.
I was also asked whether it is open to others to bid. Yes, but only on a like-for-like basis, because this is an example of technology benefiting the public. My hon. Friend asked whether we could meet in the near future. He knows that my door is always open to him. If any Member wants to see me, it is always my honour and privilege to meet them.
The two-stage approach that has been highlighted—I nearly said “pushed”—by the high street photo industry would take away the two classic advantages that I have just described: those of cost and convenience. However, the most significant factor, which I have dealt with at some length tonight, is fraud. I desperately need to clamp down on fraud. It is one of the burdens that this nation suffers from in that people desperately want to get hold of a British driving licence or a British passport.
The technology is being rolled out across government, and it is important that that should happen. At the same time, however, we must endeavour to keep costs down so as not to impose a burden on the public purse. Similarly, we must be conscious of imposing a time burden. The post office process will now take about 3.5 minutes from the person standing in front of the camera to receiving their entitlement to proceed. I continue to say that we are keeping an open mind, and that there is a place for the traditional high street photo market. At the same time, however, the Government have to move on. We need to do our level best for the public in relation to costs, time and fraud. That is why we are going to push on with this project.
Question put and agreed to.