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Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 4:"Page 4, line 37, leave out from ““are”” to end of line 46 and insert ““passports and residence permits””" The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I have explained in advance of today to the government Bill team that the amendment has been tabled primarily to give the Government the opportunity to clarify their intentions about which documents shall be designated under Clause 4. If a document is designated, it means that any application of such a document kicks off the process of application for entry by the individual on the national identity register and the obtaining by them of an identity card. I have probed the Government’s intentions behind this. I have been told that their current intention is to designate passports, and that they may designate driving licences in future. My initial objections to the whole process of designation was based on the Government’s plans in the original Bill as it reached this House to force us all to register and to have an ID card from the word go, as soon as any document was designated and we applied for it. My objections to the process of designation will evaporate into thin air if the Government do not seek to overturn the decision of this House on 23 January, when the House agreed Amendment No. 38 at col. 976. That amendment makes it clear that when an individual applies for a designated document, they can choose to go on the register and have an ID card, or they can choose not to do so. If, next Monday, the Government seek to overturn the decision of this House and to insist on compulsion in the initial stage of the operation of the register, my objections to Clause 4 would have to remain. I therefore thought that I should raise in the House my concerns about an interview that the Home Secretary gave a couple of weeks ago on Radio 4. He referred to the designation of passports and perhaps applications for a Criminal Records Bureau check. The question must therefore be; what are the Government’s intentions with regard to that check? I also tabled the amendment to give effect to a private undertaking that I made to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans last week that I would seek an opportunity for the Government to respond to a question that he had put to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, on 30 January at col. 28—a question which the right reverend Prelate fully accepted was rather wide of the mark of Amendment No. 76. Naturally, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, therefore ignored it. The right reverend Prelate asked whether any thought had been given to the impact that the designation of Criminal Records Bureau checks would have on volunteering if, of course, we have the original drafting of Clause 5 at some future stage. He pointed out that if we have the original drafting, it would appear that in order to get Criminal Records Bureau clearance, volunteers in any organisation would have to purchase their own ID card before they can volunteer, and that in the interests of encouraging volunteering, that is surely not the way in which we would wish to go. Naturally, the right reverend Prelate would have been here himself, but he was on the duty roster last week and cannot be with us this week, hence my reason for tabling the amendment. I beg to move.