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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 52A:"Page 7, line 16, leave out ““as part of or”” and insert ““is issued””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, in moving the amendment, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 52J. The amendment alters Clause 8(1)(a), which, as the Explanatory Notes inform us, aims to set out the procedure for issuing ID cards. The amendment removes the ability to make an ID card part of a designated document, thus ensuring that it has to be a separate, self-standing form of identification. The second amendment is consequential to that separation of the ID card from being part of a designated document, and inserts the phrase,"““and who indicates his wish to have an ID card””," at the end of subsection (4)(b). This highlights the important point that the choice of having an ID card and what is recorded on it should be the choice of the individual, just as the choice of registration should be voluntary. We debated the ins and outs of designated documents when we discussed Clauses 4 and 5. We on these Benches feel that this scheme should be voluntary, as the Government initially wished it to be—as the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, indicated. Indeed, she made the point that the card will be a useful form of identification, for example, in accessing public services—although, paradoxically, the Government will not make it compulsory for anyone to carry it. Clause 15 sets out the powers to make public services conditional on identity checks. Subsection (1) states that regulations may require a person who provides a public service,"““to make it a condition of providing the service to an individual that the person produces—(a) an ID card; (b) other evidence of registrable facts about himself; or (c) both””." By potentially combining the ID card as part of a designated document, not only are you then making what could then be two forms of identification into one—not that we agree limiting what could be used under Clause 15(1)(b)—but importantly, it is yet another method of ensuring compulsion by stealth. The example given in the Explanatory Notes describing an ID card as part of a designated document is of a joint,"““residence permit issued to a foreign national””." While the notes do not mention other options—indeed, they state that an ID card would be a separate card issued with passports—there is nothing in the Bill to say that it will be joint residence permits only. There is nothing to stop ID cards being made part of all designated documents. The amendment would prevent that possibility from occurring, and thus help maintain a truly voluntary scheme for which so many noble Lords voted in Clause 5. I beg to move.