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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I strongly support this important amendment. The debate has ranged widely over the whole issue of compulsion. I have amendments later on that address how the move should be made from the initial period to one of compulsion for all. I shall keep my remarks on that rather more focused matter until I move the amendments to leave out Clauses 6 and 7. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, spoke with both passion and, in his own way, compulsion about the problems we face with this Bill, the tension between compulsion and voluntarism, and the whole issue of what we may face if we allow what is a flawed Bill to go ahead with this drafting of Clause 5. We are on Report, so I will not go into the arguments on that. Suffice it to say that I agree entirely with his arguments on that score. Some of my speeches today will be even briefer than usual, as noble Lords can tell by the tone of my voice that the bug that is going round the House has found its way finally to me. The Government have not persuaded me that their system, which forces us to sign up to a gargantuan register with its intrusive audit trail of recording every part of our lives, is the right way forward. That is not the system which the public think is waiting in the wings. As ever, we on this side have no criticism of the Minister. She is a supreme advocate, but she has not been given the right material with which to work in this case. I dare to suggest that even the noble Baroness cannot make a silk purse out of this sow’s ear. My noble friend Lord Waddington talked about creeping compulsion and asked whether it should be a lottery regarding when any individual should be caught in the web. He referred in particular to applying for driving licences. I note that in Committee the Minister said that at the moment the Government have no plans to designate driving licences, but Clause 4 gives them that opportunity. In Committee I asked the Minister whether she would categorically give the assurance that the Government would therefore not seek to overturn the decision of this House in the Road Safety Bill when we removed Clauses 29 and 30, which gave the Government in that Bill the authority to withdraw current driving licences. That could be used to issue driving licences to all and require registration and the issuing of an ID card. If the noble Baroness can give us that assurance today, it would be helpful. I have tabled a later amendment on which I can explore that matter in more detail. The objective of this group of amendments is admirably simple: to require the Government to keep to their manifesto commitment that they would 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””." As we have heard this afternoon, that is not what this Bill does. What it says is that if you apply for a passport, you must apply to go on the national identity register and therefore have an ID card. As noble Lords have asked, what is voluntary about that? In Committee, the Minister estimated that by the end of the initial period, about 85 per cent of the population would have been forced to have an ID card as a result of applying for passports and going on the register. That is not what any normal person reading the manifesto would have expected. It was put with great clarity in another place by the Minister’s honourable friend Mr Neil Gerrard when he moved this amendment. He said:"““Any normal person—by that I mean people outside this place—would interpret that as, ‘When I renew my passport, I can choose whether to go on the register and have an ID card’. That is what ‘initially voluntary’ would mean to anyone who read it””.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/10/05; col. 748.]" I entirely agree with him. The amendment would make it possible to be issued with a designated document without being forced to go on the national identity register. The individual would have a real choice, and can choose to go on the register and have an ID card—there is nothing to stop them. If the Government intended to make it compulsory to have an ID card from the word go when you apply for a passport, they should have said so clearly in the manifesto. But the obfuscation has continued in our debates. In Committee the Minister said:"““There is no need for any person who does not wish to put his name on the register to so register unless and until it becomes compulsory””.—[Official Report, 15/11/05; col. 998.]" I reflected very carefully on what the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said because a little later, on 12 December, the Minister said:"““They can either apply for a new passport and get an ID card at the same time; or not get a new passport””.—[Official Report, 12/12/05; col. 1069.]" The Government’s definition of ““voluntary”” is very different from anything that I have ever come across. It is a case of, ““have an ID card or don’t leave the country””. That is not right. I support the amendment.