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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, is right in saying that government Amendment No. 65, which would have led into the conversation we have just had on Clause 15, would bite on this. For the House’s clarification it might help if I explained how Amendment No. 65 fits in with the response I intend to make on her Amendment No. 66A, because the two go together. In doing so, I hope to deal also with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, on free prescriptions, not least because he is talking about Amendment No. 33, which he moved on the first day of Report on 16 January. If that suits the House it might get us back to where we should be. My Amendment No. 65, which was passed by the House, has the effect of preventing the information contained in paragraph 9 of Schedule 1, which is the audit log, from being provided under Clause 17 to public service providers. Noble Lords will recall that Clause 17 enables the provision of information to public service providers for the purpose of verifying the identity of a person who has applied for a service. As my amendment has been accepted, the audit log will no longer be provided under Clause 17. The amendment I moved and that was passed was tabled in response to the concerns raised in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I was grateful to him for raising that issue so that we could deal with it. The noble Lord asked about prescription charges. The amendment that he would have moved would have given the individuals the option of whether an audit log should be kept of those occasions when an identity card is checked with the individual’s consent under Clause 14. For the reasons that I gave earlier, which were recorded in Hansard, we believed that it would be wrong to allow the possibility of individuals deciding for themselves whether some checks against the register should be logged. If that happened, there would be no record to use in cases of complaint and it would mean that a fraudster trying to use someone else’s card could insist that no record was kept of that transaction. At the same time, we thought again about the second part of the noble Lord’s amendment. I hope that we have made it plain that it is no part of our intention to compel people to produce ID cards for prescriptions that are free. I know that there was a debate about whether we would need to do so for ophthalmic and other issues—dental treatment was mentioned on the previous occasion—and I want to make it clear that it is not our intention so to do. We do not think that the noble Lord’s concern is well founded. I turn to the noble Baroness’s Amendment No. 66A, which would remove paragraph (a) of subsection (2) of Clause 18. As noble Lords know, Clause 18 is designed to provide a general safeguard that in most circumstances people will not be forced to use an identity card to prove identity in advance of compulsion. Thus, in line with Clause 18(1), it would not be possible for, let us say, a bank or building to require a customer to produce an identity card as the only acceptable proof of identity in advance of compulsion. The safeguard in Clause 18 still allows an identity card to be one of the methods accepted for proving identity, provided that a reasonable alternative method of establishing identity is also allowed. It would no longer apply once it is compulsory to register and to hold an identity card. The words in Clause 18(2)(a) that would be removed by Amendment No. 66A serve a purpose. This subsection would allow a requirement to be imposed to produce an identity card in advance of compulsion if it had been imposed under Clause 15, which deals with making public services conditional on the production of an identity card or any other enactment. However, any regulations under Clause 15 would be subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, so Parliament would have the opportunity to debate and agree them. Moreover, as provided in Clause 15(2), any such regulation in advance of compulsion could not apply to the payment of benefits or to the delivery of any free public service. I hope that gives as clear a reassurance as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, would wish for. We should not rule out in future providing that identity cards be required to be produced if that is a condition of other legislation, which also would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. Accordingly, we believe that the drafting of Clause 18 is satisfactory. I therefore invite the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.