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Identity Cards Bill

I do not want to make a meal of this, but the Minister cannot say that the draughtsmanship is felicitous. If one looks at Clause 1(3), one is talking there about an individual who may have a convenient method of proving registrable facts about himself. Clearly, when Clause 1(3) refers to individuals it is referring to living persons. If one then moves to Clause 1(7) and reads ““an individual’s identity””, because there is nothing to show the opposite, presumably one is talking about a living person’s identity. To then jump to an entirely different concept of what is going to happen after a person’s death in Clause 1(7)(d) really is absolute nonsense. If you are going to deal with the question of what is going to happen after a person dies, whether that death should be registered and if so by whom, that should be the subject of an entirely different clause in the Bill. As it stands, what it is really saying is that a live person should register his death.