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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 101:"Page 4, line 35, at end insert—" ““(   )   No United Kingdom citizen may be subject to any charge or civil or criminal penalty, arising from his refusal to surrender any lawfully held document issued by a Minister of the Crown or Northern Ireland department or any other person authorised by them, if a purpose of requiring its surrender is to replace it, or require its replacement, by the issue of a document designated under this Act, if that person does not wish to participate in an identity card scheme or Register, unless that identity card scheme has been made compulsory for all United Kingdom citizens over the age of 18.”” The noble Baroness said: In moving Amendment No. 101, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 102, 147, 148 and 150, in my name. Amendments Nos. 145 and 146 were originally in this group, but they have been degrouped with my consent and will be dealt with later. As ever, I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Peyton of Yeovil. Like him, I was not so guileless as to believe that this scheme is not intended to be compulsory overall. My noble friend is right that the Government have made clear their ultimate objective: to force all of us to have ID cards. In the beginning, we were not clear about what kind of scheme it is, with its mammoth register and all the difficulties involved in that. The public, who I am sure all avidly read the Labour Party manifesto, would not have believed that, because it said:"““We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports””." The Minister has made it clear that when the Government use the word ““voluntary”” they mean ““compulsory””. In that case, I have to look at the Bill in a different way. I am sure we will have full debates on that issue when we come to Clauses 5, 6 and 7. My amendments are modest. Amendment No. 101 would protect United Kingdom citizens from being forced to suffer any penalty if they refused to surrender to a Minister of the Crown or a Northern Ireland department any document that they hold lawfully, provided that the purpose of the demand for the surrender of that document arose out of the Government’s determination to replace it with a designated document that would carry with it a requirement for the person to apply to be entered on the national identity register and thereby have to have an ID card, according to the Bill. They would be subject to a penalty only after the scheme has been made compulsory—the Government would say ““fully compulsory””—for all by the super-affirmative process. Amendment No. 102 goes further and establishes that somebody who has to apply for a new document that is a designated document for the purposes of the Bill cannot be forced to have an ID card unless certain conditions are met. They are that the person has stated in writing that he wants to have an ID card, or that the scheme has been made compulsory for everybody over the age of 18. Amendment No. 147 removes the distinction in Clause 8(6) between an application for an ID card and an application to be entered on, or to confirm an entry on, the national identity register. We believe that people should be given the opportunity to refuse to have an ID card in the initial period, the so-called ““voluntary period””, even if they are entered on the register. Amendments Nos. 148 and 150 knock out more of the compulsion by stealth in the voluntary period. They remove subsections that force one to apply for an ID card when one applies for a designated document. I believe that my amendments are entirely in line with the commitment in the Labour Party manifesto. Therefore, I have high hopes that the Minister will want to adopt them. I beg to move.