---

Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for the effort that she has made because I was going through a soul-searching exercise and thinking that I would like to know the names and addresses of all the places where I have lived. Those of us who have worked in international organisations and have been brought up internationally forget addresses very quickly. The noble Baroness has addressed the issue but I have certain concerns regarding the terminology. The word ““resident”” is used but it can sometimes be misinterpreted as ““being resident”” or ““ordinary resident”” and it may get confused with one’s original status in life. That causes concerns for people who have dual passports and international people. Those who have worked in multinational or international organisations will often have been on secondments for a maximum period of two years. In some cases in my former group, the secondment was to the cruise liners, where effectively you lived for a period of time, often with no separate residence. The same would often apply to bachelors in the Navy, who would regard the ship as their home and would have no separate residence. I am not saying that there is any confusion but I should have preferred it if we had stuck to the phrase ““where they have lived for a reasonable period of time”” rather than using the word ““resident””. This is a difficult issue because we will still have all the terrible problems that we read about from time to time in newspapers of a married man cohabiting in another house with someone else and denying that that is his permanent residence. I think that the problem of where people are came up when we originally looked at the poll tax. I am not suggesting that the amendment moved by the noble Baroness is not acceptable because she has really tried, but I think that all sorts of problems may emerge later which could cause individuals harm. Therefore, I wonder whether it might be possible to define the word ““residence”” more accurately and change it to, say, ““where someone has lived for a reasonable period of time””. Whether it is six or five years does not matter. This also applies to multinational students—not those from some of the countries nearer to home but those from the third world and others, who often will not have a full address. Once, in Cairo, I tried to produce a street map with addresses because there were no addresses. It was a case of turn right at wherever it might be—there were no traffic lights. That happens in many areas. The latest reports produced by the immigration people on a number of residents of the United Kingdom or those born abroad in some of the African countries show that they do not have addresses. I am not trying to make difficulties; I just want to point out that some issues which may appear relatively simple are not as simple as we would like to believe.