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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 114:"Page 5, line 23, after ““information ”” insert ““within Schedule 1””" The noble Lord said: Amendments Nos. 114, 116, 156, 173 and 173A are all mine. They seek to set the limit, in Clauses 5, 9 and 12, on what regulations the Secretary of State may make vis-à-vis information that may be required of individuals with ID cards. I take Amendment No. 116 as a specific example in order to try to explain this to the Committee. It affects Clause 5(6). Subsection (6) currently says:"““Regulations under this section must not require an individual to provide information to another person unless it is information required by the Secretary of State for the statutory purposes””." My amendment would strike out the words ““for the statutory purposes”” and replace them with ““within Schedule 1””. We have had a lot of discussion over the days around Clause 1 and Schedule 1. I think it is fair to say that the House as a whole—indeed, the Government are included—is anxious to ensure that the facts that may be placed on the register under the Bill are to be constrained within Clause 1, in particular in subsections (5), (6) and (7). The problem with Clause 5(6) is that it entitles the Secretary of State to require information from anybody applying for an ID card, or with an ID card, where that information is required by him for the statutory purposes. That is a much wider category of information than the ““registrable facts”” defined in Clause 1. The statutory purposes, defined in Clause 1(3) are—I do not want to read the whole of Clause 1(3)—extremely wide and talk about the facilitation of the provision of a method of ascertaining and verifying registrable facts. I felt, and I hope that the Government will agree, that it would make life easier for people trying to construe the clauses to which this set of amendments relates if we kept to the formula which otherwise seems to prevail in the Bill—that of describing the right to information on the part of the Secretary of State, or the registrar, to information within Schedule 1. Then we know exactly where we are. It is possible under the Bill for the contents of Schedule 1 to be varied. We have our arguments about that. None the less, that is the way the Bill is structured. I feel very strongly that we should stick to Schedule 1, and not find ourselves in an uncertain position where the Secretary of State might argue that a whole range of facts outside Clause 1(5), (6) and (7) and outside Schedule 1 is his or her entitlement to require, by dint of his interpretation of the statutory purposes. I hope that that is a sufficient explanation of why this set of amendments has been proposed and I shall of course be interested to hear the Government’s response. I beg to move.