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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I support this amendment; if I had been a bit more organised, I would have added my name to it. As I have stated before, we need greater protections in this Bill to ensure that the ““Big Brother”” culture does not get out of control. I have sat in on many debates on government data-sharing in various organisations to which I belong at which people from various government departments have been present. It is clear that no one is exactly sure what is allowed and what is not. There are also a lot of data-sharing initiatives which I am not sure would, strictly speaking, be permitted under the Bill. Oversight of all this data sharing by the Office of the Information Commissioner is essential. We know, however, that that office is underfunded and overloaded—particularly since the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It is clear that many government departments do not know when they should be referring to the Information Commissioner. By embodying that in the Bill, we will make it much clearer to government departments what they should be doing, who they should be consulting and how. I was thinking of trying to introduce a privacy impact assessment clause into this Bill. When I read the amendment, however, I decided that this was probably a much better way of going about it, which is why I support it. The old argument that we should not worry because we have got the ECHR and all the human rights bodies out there holds no water. How are you to get a case together? Who is going to bring it? How does a citizen do that? It is unworkable; people feel powerless. For example, there is a lot of talk about the fact that local authority valuation officers will be allowed to come into your home and photograph the interior, which has all sorts of privacy and security implications. A lot of people are very concerned about that. They would like to take it to the European Court of Human Rights. My attitude has been to wonder where is the legislation that permits this. They have been clearly told that this is going to happen.