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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 5:"Page 2, line 2, at end insert ““the sentence for which may be imprisonment or detention””" The noble Lord said: My Lords, this amendment, which is also in the name of my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford, is another to do with Clause 1, which one cannot repeat too often is the key clause in the Bill. It often is, but particularly so in this Bill. Amendment No. 5 affects subsection (4), which stipulates:"““For the purposes of this Act something is necessary in the public interest””—" that is the term of art—"““if, and only if, it is””—" then there are five categories, as I am sure noble Lords know. The second of those categories at present reads:"““for the purposes of the prevention or detection of crime””." If my amendment is accepted by the Government or by the House, it would add:"““the sentence for which may be imprisonment or detention””." What is in my mind is to try to avoid a whole lot of petty offences trammelling the workings of the Act. I suppose one could envisage a potential misuse by an irresponsible policeman of this provision. Anybody in the police force or in one of the other authorities with powers under the Act can apply for information on the register if they come within one of these five categories. One might conceivably imagine a policeman improperly seeking to get access to an address or previous addresses of an individual. In order to provide an excuse for that, the individual concerned might be followed in order to ascertain whether the most puny of misdemeanours was committed, such as parking where he or she should not be parking or parking longer than he or she should be parking for. That would then fall within the provisions of paragraph (b). That, in turn, would open the doors of the registry to enquiry and extraction of all information in it except as in the paragraph excluding sensitive personal data. I thought fit to bring this before the House in order to deal with that. I also think that it would do no damage to what I take to be the mainstream purposes of the Government in bringing forward the Bill, because any offence of any seriousness will carry the possibility of imprisonment—or, in the case of a minor, of detention—even though as a matter of fact the magistrates would not contemplate imposing imprisonment, particularly for first offences. That is the reasoning and the purpose of the amendment. I hope the Government will find favour with it. I beg to move.