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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 111:"After Clause 40, insert the following new clause—" ““PROOF OF IDENTITY (1)   A passport issued to a British national by the United Kingdom Passport Service shall be proof of that person’s identity. (2)   The United Kingdom Passport Service shall issue upon request to any British passport holder an identity card (““British National Identity Card””). (3)   The British National Identity Card shall contain within it all information held in a United Kingdom Passport. (4)   The British National Identity Card shall be accepted as proof of identity by any Government department or agency. (5)   All other forms of proof of identity shall be secondary proof of identity to the United Kingdom Passport and the British National Identity Card.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to move this amendment in this, the 100th anniversary of the Labour Party. I was sorry not to be invited to that great occasion, but I wonder, as history passes by, whether this legislation will be deemed to be groundbreaking or backbreaking. As I said to the Minister the other night, I think we are all on the same side, but we are all confused from different levels. I believe that people in this country accept the value of an identity card. Having accepted that, it is only a question of what identity card, and for what purpose. This is effectively the purpose of my amendment. I moved a similar amendment before, and withdrew. I also moved an amendment where there was a certain bit of confusion, but I wish to go back and say that the Minister and I start from opposing sides of the world. I start from the ultimate proof of identity—the passport. Having asked her if she would reconfirm the Answer I have had before to a Written Question, I would like to read it out:"““The United Kingdom Passport Service, an executive agency of the Home Office, issues passports to British nationals in the UK. British passports are issued at the discretion of the Secretary of State by exercise of Royal prerogative, in line with the British Nationality Acts. A passport is issued only after an applicant’s nationality status and identity has been confirmed, and is accepted throughout the world as proof of these””.—[Official Report, 22/6/04; cols. WA 121–22.]" The passport, therefore, is the ultimate identity card. There is no stronger identity card, none more valued, and it should not be replaced. We came afterwards to a certain little argument about what words should appear, and what name. I moved an amendment, which I withdrew, that the name should be as recorded in his passport, or in the form required for a passport. At that time, the noble Baroness did not quite agree with us and there was a rather amusing debate when we all accepted that none of our names would qualify. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon, as the other day I made a mistake. I was overwhelmed and forgot my lines. I called him ““the noble Lord, Lord Swindon””. In 18 of the 22 countries of the EEA, his last name is Swindon and, therefore, that is his last name. He pointed out in the debate that he was sometimes known as ““Lord Stod of Swin””. I am an ““of”” but the last bit of my name—““Croydon””, of which, being a Scot, I am not desperately proud—does not appear in my passport because it is not a registered name. We went through some confusion, but the noble Baroness satisfied us in one of her notes—I was the only one in the Chamber who received it—which said that they were asking for the name that individuals are known by for all purposes, which is what applies when one goes for a passport. Without my having to move an amendment or to press it, the noble Baroness has quietly, surreptitiously and kindly answered my question. We have accepted that the passport is the ultimate proof of identity and that one’s name will be as in one’s passport. If that is the ultimate identity card, why do we need the Bill at all? If we started from the viewpoint that the identity card was the passport, we might not need it. Secondly, the amendment says that,"““the United Kingdom Passport Service should issue upon request to any British passport holder an identity card””" which will come anyway. It may be called a biometric identity card, but it will go with the passport. I then put in brackets ““British National Identity Card”” because that is how it should be known. If it is the ultimate identity card and it is proof of your nationality as a British national, why not call it the British national identity card? I also asked the Minister about all these foreigners who come over here. How will we know who they are? Surely they should have their nationalities on their identity card. The noble Baroness said:"““I thank the noble Lord. The truth is that EU citizens do not have to surrender their own national cards when they come here. However, they will be eligible for a UK card if they are resident here, but it will not show nationality””.—[Official Report, 15/11/05; col. 1008.]" Anyone who does not have a British national identity card is a foreigner. I believe that we are keener to identify foreigners with identity cards than ourselves. However, that leads to even more confusion. I tried to push the Baroness gently at the time and asked whether there would be more than one identity card. She said, ““No””. I shall not quote her, as I cannot remember the column number and I shall lose my place in my papers. She said that there would be only one identity card. So I moved an amendment saying, ““Let’s make sure that we could not have more than one””. Then she kindly said, ““No, you can’t do that because we might have to have more than one””. There was then a flurry of feathers in the Home Office hen coop, and bits of paper came rushing across. The noble Baroness said, ““Yes, there will be lots of identity cards effectively””, and she even used the words ““et cetera””. It does not really matter if we have lots of identity cards, but it may have an impact on costs. The passport is the ultimate identity card and, to go with the passport, I hope, will be the British national identity card, which will enable us to travel within 22 or so states. The noble Baroness also pointed out that there were reasons for having the card because, effectively, it would be a travel card rather than an identity card. I suggest that it is an identity card, part of whose purpose is for travel. So that it may go on the record, I point out that the 22 countries that have identity cards for travel at the moment are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland. There is no reason why the United Kingdom should not join that happy band of bedfellows. However, in many cases their identity cards and the data for them come from their passports, but there are problems when it comes to biometrics. The Germans do not want biometrics in any way. We will have biometrics, but if we have only two fingers that will take up two-thirds of the cost of the card, and there may be problems. I would like to ask the Minister—I may put down a Written Question—whether she could set out the conditions and data on each of the identity cards of the 22 states so that we can see how they are different. There is no point in us demanding more than is necessary to travel to those countries if that is one of the purposes of the British national identity card. I now come to the important question of the proof of identity. If the passport is the ultimate, then the British national identity card will come second and everything else comes third. In response to a Written Question from me, the Government kindly wrote back that the Department for Work and Pensions accepted 22 different pieces of paper for proof of identity. So the first thing in addition to the British national identity card is that there should be an identity card that is related solely to applications to the Department for Work and Pensions team for grants. That may be a slightly different one and of a different colour. Of course, other identity cards are issued at the moment to officials of government and the third identity card that I want to suggest is the name, rank and number card. Any official of government who has a right to demand information or to enter people’s premises should have his own identity card with his name, rank and number on it and should present it when he comes to people’s premises. That is not a complicated issue. Then we come to another point. It is right and reasonable that those of us who are entitled to benefits after a certain age—retirement age—whether it be the winter fuel allowance or pensions or bus passes or others, should have an identity card that prevents us from having to run around producing other pieces of paper to prove a known fact. I do not think that there is any need for a restriction on the different types of card that may be issued, but I have a problem with the register. On most occasions when one presents an identity card, no one will have a reader, so the only method of identification will be the visual information on the front of it. It will matter not what biometric data are on it. In recent readings on the Continent, 30 per cent of the biometric data readings for a face failed to recognise it. I refer back to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, who, when I asked whether the card would have one’s sex on it, said that proof of identity would be the photograph. I found in the research that I did recently that almost two out of three women to whom I spoke had changed their hair colour and the shape of their head and recognition was quite difficult. Even when one walks around the Bishops’ Bar, I have found it difficult to identify people from the photograph hanging from their neck. If people wish to prove their identity—that is where I am coming from—they must have something that they can present that enables people to recognise them or to check who they are. That is not a particularly difficult exercise. I do not intend to press the amendment, but, if we start with the passport and accept that that is the ultimate proof of identity, all other pieces of paper or plastic cards are, effectively, secondary. When I asked the noble Baroness whether I could have everything on my card—I would like everything that is on the identity register to be on my card—she said that I could not. A driving licence is not really proof of identity, but it is accepted by some people as proof of identity. If on your British national identity card you do not have your driving licence data, there is no method of proving with that card that you have the ability or the right to drive, particularly if you are travelling internationally. As your Lordships know, the British driving licence is not really accepted as proof of identity for car hire in many places, because it does not have the secondary piece of paper containing any points that you may have run up through bad behaviour. I become more and more confused by this. The Minister says that we can have only one identity card and now we may have two but only in certain circumstances, preferably when we are bisexual or something like that. Can she not admit that we might be able to have all sorts of identity cards that could replace some of the other requirements to prove who we are? When we come to nationality, there is no reason at all why the card should not have certain extra bits on it; for example, the Welsh might have a Welsh card and the Scots a Scots card. There is no difficulty at all. When we come to the private sector, however, the only acceptable proof of identity in the banking sector in many parts of the world tends to be the original of your passport or a certified copy of it. As we have suggested that the identity card will help people with the commercial or private sectors, I would like to know how and where. Ultimately, some of the rules still say, under the banking regulations, ““know thy customer””. Even more under the new banking legislation, you have a duty to probe and push as far as you can. Those institutions will not have access to the identity register. I am not flying kites or chasing hares. I am simply asking what the maximum number of identity cards that we might have in issue is and whether more identity cards will cost more than one. I beg to move.