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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 111A:"Before Clause 41, insert the following new clause—" ““PARLIAMENTARY CONTROL OVER STANDARDS AND ADMINISTRATION OF ID CARDS (1)   Parliament shall have the sole power to decide— (a)   whether a voluntary or compulsory ID card scheme shall be introduced in the United Kingdom; (b)   who shall be required to possess an ID card, or shall be issued with an ID card, or be entered in the National Identity Register, in the United Kingdom; and (c)   the security standards required in any ID card or National Identity Register in the United Kingdom. (2)   No international body may impose on any United Kingdom citizen the duty to attend or to have attended at any place for the purposes of the issue, or in connection with preparations for the issue, of an ID card and a United Kingdom citizen shall have free passage throughout the United Kingdom and the member states of the European Union without the need to fulfil any such obligation, except as shall have been agreed, or determined, by statute in the United Kingdom. (3)   No Minister of the Crown may enter into any undertaking within the European Union to introduce an ID card scheme or identity register in the United Kingdom, or propose or agree any common standards in relation to such a scheme, unless and until Royal Assent has been given to this Act or any other statute introduced for that specific purpose.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is the same amendment that my noble friend Lady Anelay moved in Committee on 12 December 2005, reported at cols 1098 to 1099 of Hansard. The debate did not finish until eighteen minutes past midnight, when we were all in a state of some confusion but had been promised a clarifying letter from the Minister. I shall return to that. The amendment would give Parliament—the House of Commons and your Lordships’ House—sole power over any UK ID card system and to prevent the Government from signing us up to any EU system without Parliament’s explicit consent. The burden of my song in Committee was that I feared that Parliament had already lost the power to give effect to the amendment, even if it were passed. I pointed out that Title IV of the Treaty establishing the European Community—the TEC—which covers,"““Visas, Asylum, Immigration and other Policies Related to the Free Movement of Persons””" was introduced at Amsterdam under unanimity. That means that we could veto measures introduced under it. However, by a unanimous Council decision in December 2004, the voting system on measures introduced under Title IV, except for legal immigration, was changed from unanimity to qualified majority voting, under Article 251 of the treaty. I then suggested that work being done in Brussels under the so-called Hague programme indicated that the Commission was moving towards proposing an EU-wide ID system, starting with minimum standards for each member state. For the record, I should mention that I omitted to mention a protocol at the back of the TEC. Protocol 4, on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland, was inserted at Amsterdam and gave the UK an opt-out from Title I—even if the other member states voted unanimously to change its decision-making procedure from unanimity to QMV, which they duly did. However, Article 3 of the protocol gives the UK and Ireland the power to opt in to any proposal under Title IV in which they wish to participate. Any such participation would now be by QMV except for proposals about legal immigration, which remain under unanimity. It is here that the plot thickens, in the shape of Council decision 15226/04 of 15 December 2004, a copy of which I shall place in your Lordships’ Library. Paragraph (13) of that decision says that,"““In accordance with Article 3 of the Protocol on the position of the United Kingdom and Ireland . . . those Member States””—" the United Kingdom and Ireland—"““have notified their wish to take part in the adoption and application of this Decision””." So, it is pretty clear that we have opted into decision 15226/04, but what does that say? Paragraph (6) says that,"““the Council is required to act in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 251””—" in other words, qualified majority voting—"““when adopting, in conformity with the case law of the Court of Justice relating to the choice of legal basis for Community acts, the measures referred to in Article 62  . . . (2)(a)””" of the TEC. Other articles are mentioned; I do not need to trouble your Lordships with them to show where the labyrinth leads us. I trust that it is now clear that the United Kingdom has opted into Council decision 15226/04 and that we are therefore bound to accept any qualified majority vote in the Council for measures brought under Article 62(2) of the TEC. That article, under Title IV, covers,"““measures on the crossing of the external borders of the Member States which shall establish . . . standards and procedures to be followed by Member States in carrying out checks on persons at such borders””." It is pretty clear that an EU identity card system could be sanctioned by those words. The Minister may say something along the lines of what she said in Committee: that ID cards are not specifically mentioned as a measure covered under Article 62(2)(a), but the decision I quoted rubs in the fact that the Luxembourg court—that engine of EU integration—will alone rule on the decision’s legal justification, as is always the case. When the Government have admitted more than once in Written Answers that Brussels is using Article 308 of the TEC, which sanctions measures only in pursuit of the objectives of the Common Market, as the legal justification for the EU’s entire fundamental rights programme, how can they pretend that Article 62(2)(a) could not give rise to an EU ID card system? I have two brief, simple questions for the Minister, but before putting them, perhaps I should comment as kindly as I can on her letter to me of 10 January, following our debate on 12 December. In her first paragraph, she claims generically that:"““There is no question of ID cards being introduced by fiat from Brussels””." She also says:"““The introduction of ID cards is entirely a matter for the UK Parliament to decide””." Noble Lords should note that quotation. The Minister assures us that Parliament will have the final say, not the Government in the secret conclaves of Brussels. I fear that those statements will turn out to be wishful thinking. The Minister then goes on:"““I should like to respond to what you say about Title IV of the EC treaty. Title IV is primarily concerned with border controls and the entry and residence of third country nationals in the community. It does not provide for the introduction of a European Union ID card””." True, oh Queen, as such. But my contention is that it is wide enough to do so and that it will. The Minister goes on:"““In addition, the UK is only bound by measures drawn up under Title IV if it opts into them””." That may be true under the terms of Protocol IV, as I have mentioned, but I trust that I have shown that the UK has indeed opted into the measures to be decided by qualified majority voting under Council Decision 15226/04 and several others. I could quote clauses out of the transport section of the treaty that would do just as well, but let us use that one for the moment. So my first question to the Minister is: are the Government saying that Decision 15226/04 could not—even with the eventual support of the Luxembourg court, against whose decision there is no appeal—be used to introduce an EU ID card system under Article 62(2)(a) or other articles in the treaty? If that is their position, I must ask them to explain the treaty basis for it. Why do they believe that that is the position when the treaty appears to say otherwise? Secondly, if the Government support the Minister when she says in her letter that the introduction of ID cards in the UK will be entirely a matter for Parliament to decide, why do they not accept the amendment and particularly subsection (3) thereof. If the Government mean what the Minister said, surely they must undertake that they, the Executive, will not opt in to any future proposal in Brussels that could lead to an EU scheme being imposed on us, if they have not already done so—I fear they have. If the Government will not accept the amendment, will they at least give that undertaking, and if not, why not? I am sorry to have spent so much time on this amendment, but I have done so to show how entwined we already are in the tentacles of Brussels on the issue of identity cards, as, indeed, we now are for the majority of our national legislation. Noble Lords will remember that before the last general election, Michael Howard said that in the event of victory the Conservatives would make changes to our systems of dealing with asylum and illegal immigration, only to be told by the EU Commission that he was out of order and that the UK Government were not longer free to do so, having ceded control of those areas under Title IV of the TEC and subsequent Council decisions. It is the same picture that we are looking at today. Those appear to be the waters through which we are now navigating, and I do not see why this situation should be much different. I do not pretend to have understood the whole picture, which is unusually complex, perhaps deliberately so. But I am reasonably sure of one thing: if we stay in the European Union, the United Kingdom will end up as part of an EU ID card system, controlled eventually by Brussels, and there will be nothing that this Parliament, as opposed to the government of the day, will have been able to do about it. In the mean time, I look forward to the Minister’s reply to the questions I have put to her, in the hope that her answers may help to stave off the fate that, I fear, otherwise awaits us. I beg to move.