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Identity Cards Bill

I see that the Wolfgang element has emerged. I assure the hon. Gentleman that no Government run by my party would bundle such people out or have them arrested under the terrorist legislation. I look forward to the support of the Liberal Democrats later in this debate, and I assure them that if they need protection, a Conservative Government will protect them from the increasing activities of the police and the state. Many Members might think that the Liberal Democrats are in need of a quite a lot of protection. At this stage, however, I want to concentrate on the important issues that the amendments allow us to discuss. The hon. Member for Walthamstow began his speech by discussing the concept of the designated document. We had that discussion at some little length in Committee, and at no stage were the Government able to tell us precisely what they meant by the category of designated documents that they were going to include. What we discovered, which was instructive, is that the list is open-ended, undefined and designed to allow the Government, through clause 5, slowly but surely to allow a greater category of documents to become designated. In Committee, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) and I discussed all the kinds of licences that one can get at a post office, and the Government had absolutely no idea whether those would be designated. We also realised that 20 per cent. of the population have never had, and never will have, a passport, which represents a huge proportion of the British population. In Committee, the Minister of State said:"““We have made no secret of the fact that registration on the database will ultimately be compulsory—we want universal coverage. That means two things: it might be appropriate to designate other documents, and it might be that the designation of such documents means a faster coverage of the entire population.””—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 12 July 2005; c. 177.]" At no stage—I am sure that the Minister will confirm this—was he able to produce a list of those documents that he hoped would become designated. Through the Bill, the Government are therefore asking us to give them a blank cheque simply to increase the creeping designation of documents. That is a wholly unhealthy way to design a piece of legislation, and it is even more unhealthy for Parliament to give the Government unseen powers over the citizen and the way in which he or she conducts his or her life. I therefore urge Members to listen carefully to what the hon. Gentleman said. I will leave the Liberal Democrat spokesman to deal at greater length with amendments Nos. 39, 36, 37 and 38. Clause 5, however, deals with applications relating to entries in the register, and with the powers that the Home Secretary will give himself, which we have not seen in any written form, to compel us as citizens to do what he wants. For example, he will be able to compel us to provide such information as he thinks fit—which is undefined—for the purpose of verifying information that may be entered in the register about an individual in consequence of his having made an application to go on the register. One is given the impression that applying to go on the register is something for which the Government are deeply grateful, and that it is a voluntary activity, but it is not—it is distinctly compulsory and the limits of the Secretary of State’s powers are undefined. The Government really ought to have the self-confidence to condescend to let us see the statutory instruments containing the 61 powers that they intend that we should be bound by. That is in parentheses, however. Under the Bill, individuals may be required to attend a specified place at a particular time in order to register, and to give up information about themselves to go into this huge, great national register—this great bucket of private information that will slosh around between the various Departments and agencies, and to which private companies might even have access for a fee. If we consider the creeping way in which the Bill gives powers to the Government, it might well be that aspects of this data register will be available to certain private companies. As the Government farm out their functions to private companies, and if that is to work properly, those private companies must have access, if not to the whole of the information, at least to sections of it. I urge Members of the House to be very careful before they allow the Government to move down that road. Let us assume, however, that one lives in the Outer Hebrides, Orkney or Shetland, and there does not happen to be a suitable place to register on those islands, or let us assume that one is in rural Devon, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire or even Bournemouth—[Laughter.] Let us assume that one will be required to travel some considerable distance, at one’s own expense, to this gulag, where the Government will have one fingerprinted, photographed and otherwise processed. Why should the citizen be compelled, at the Home Secretary’s direction, to travel around the country looking for the place where they must provide all this information? Why should he be compelled to travel to such a place to have his fingerprints and other biometric information taken and recorded, when one bears in mind that these are by and large not exactly secure methods of determining a person’s identity? Let us consider fingerprints. In Leicester, which is the nearest large city to my constituency of Harborough, the Government subjected people to the fingerprint test in a pilot scheme to see whether it would happily provide a sensible biometric system. Of the 772 people who submitted their fingerprints in Leicester, 642, or 83.16 per cent., were identified correctly—the lowest rate of any test centre in the United Kingdom—and there was a failure rate of almost 17 per cent. in matching the individual to the fingerprint. Across the country, approximately 45 million to 48 million people over the age of 16 will be required to add to the convenience of this Government by providing an entry on the register and giving in addition the information found in the schedule. Seventeen per cent. of between 45 million to 48 million people is a very big number, and yet this is the system that the Government are compelling us and our constituents to adhere to. There is not simply a smack on the wrist but a fine—a civil penalty—of up to £2,500 if an individual or one of their family members over the age of 16 fails or refuses to do what is required by the Secretary of State under one of the as yet unseen statutory instruments.