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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the arguments in support of these amendments. However, as I stated when we discussed these issues in Committee, the Government consider it necessary for the reports to be addressed to the Secretary of State with the potential for parts of them to be excluded from the report laid before Parliament. I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, says about that contention; he suggests that it is bizarre that we should so decide. However, this situation has prevailed in a number of other positions. I have already made it clear that there are precedents for the removal of sensitive aspects of the reports of statutory commissioners before they are laid before Parliament. For example, similar mechanisms to the one in this clause apply in relation to the Surveillance Commissioner, the Intelligence Services Commissioner and Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary. Clause 25 contains safeguards to ensure that there is sufficient scrutiny of the commissioner’s reports, because all reports prepared by the commissioner will be laid before Parliament. I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, says about his experience. The views that he expresses reflect the feeling almost of awe in which the Home Office was hitherto held. I can assure noble Lords that there is an appropriate degree of vigour and scrutiny when it comes to the Home Office of today. There is no longer any such imbalance. In addition, there are only two reasons why matters may be excluded from the report that is laid before Parliament. Those are if the publication of the material would be prejudicial to national security or to the prevention and detection of crime. A precedent for reporting directly to Parliament is, for instance, the Information Commissioner; he has very wide enforcement powers, but they are unrelated to national security matters. The Immigration Services Commissioner is a regulatory commissioner of immigration services providers who reports directly to Parliament. We have to look at each commissioner and the role that they are to perform, and then decide where the appropriate reporting responsibilities should lie. We believe that they lie in the way that we have outlined. This is not, as the noble Earl, Lord Onslow, would cast it, a cavalier attitude; it is a very careful and balanced approach to the way in which reporting should be dealt with. Under Amendment No. 85A, the commissioner would have the final say over which matters would be excluded from his reports. We do not think that the commissioner is the right person to make that decision. The Secretary of State, by virtue of his overarching responsibilities, has a thorough overview of issues affecting national security and the prevention and detection of crime. For this amendment to be workable and for the National Identity Scheme Commissioner to be capable of making an informed decision about what should or what should not be excluded from the report, he would have to be briefed on national security and crime in the way that the Secretary of State is. Aside from being an illogical and disproportionate way of ensuring that certain sensitive information does not get into the public domain, that would significantly change the nature of the commissioner’s role. I hope that that is not something which noble Lords would easily contemplate. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, talked about access to the register. In case noble Lords are under any misapprehension about that, I reiterate that a number of organisations which he suggests would have access to the register will not. I hope that I can reassure noble Lords that the Bill allows the Secretary of State to provide information in particular circumstances to those authorised—for example, to the police or security services. However, provision of information that has been requested is very different from unfettered access, which this Bill does not allow. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, may well be right that this is a sign of paranoia. I hesitate to suggest that noble Lords are paranoid, but, for the purposes of this argument, I can certainly accept that the noble Earl may be right. Let me assure them that the Bill is not out to get anyone. It is delivering a fair, proportionate response, and the commissioner will have an extremely important role, which can properly be discharged in the way we have indicated. I hope that I have persuaded noble Lords to be a little more moderate in the way in which they consider the Government’s proposals and not to press these amendments.