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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I support and have added my name to the amendment. I agree with every word that the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said. The fifth subdivision of the definition of,"““necessary in the public interest””," is different in kind from the other four. They involve a degree of illegality. This does not. If we were to leave this in the Bill, the national register would be open to anyone at any time for any information on it, provided they fall within the extremely broad ambit of who has access to that data. I would go as far as to say that the amendment is one of the most important that could be conceived for keeping the scope of the national register within some sort of bounds. It is very dangerous—when you get sunk into a Bill such as this, you constantly think of those working within the establishment, perhaps forgetting that sometimes information is the property of the citizen, and that our privacy of our information is a considerable civic liberty which we should not impinge on in the way that this paragraph would allow. I strongly support the amendment.