Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, it is a particular personal pleasure to thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, of Hammersmith in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, because I had the pleasure and privilege of being vicar of All Saints, Fulham, from 1972 to 1981, when he was a very active councillor on Hammersmith and Fulham Council and a Member of Parliament for part of the area in which I served. As many of us know, he has very wide experience, not just as a probation officer, but also through a wide range of interests both from his local council days and from the time when he was in the other House. He will also bring a lightness of touch to our debates. I believe I can say on behalf of the House that we are extremely grateful that you have been banged up. May you be banged up for a very long time. I very much respect and value privacy—my own and that of other people. Nevertheless, I cannot bring myself to oppose identity cards in principle. The Government already have access to a great deal of information about us, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, has already drawn attention, much of which is widely available in the public realm. I do not object to such information being collated and centralised on an identity card if such cards are really in the public interest and if they really serve the interest that they set out to serve. But as many other noble Lords have already said, will they achieve their stated purpose and will they do so without significant detriment to other aspects of public interest? The Home Affairs Committee points out that many democracies have identity card schemes without detriment to civil liberties, but the effects depend on the details of how such information is used and disclosed. Much of that is dependent on the future use of the Secretary of State’s powers to regulate through secondary legislation, which itself is a large extension of executive discretion. Many anxieties have been voiced about function-creep, notably by Richard Thomas, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. The Information Commissioner will certainly be expected to know about these matters. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, in its fifth report of 2005, expressed a number of anxieties about whether and how the operation of the scheme will be limited to its stated statutory purposes in respect of the personal information to be included on the register; the potential for information to be recorded without the knowledge or consent of the individual concerned; the making of contracts or services conditional on production of a card or access to the register; the potential for extensive data sharing in order to confirm information on the register; and the disclosure of information to public bodies without justifiable limits and safeguards. It is also apparent that even without the introduction of compulsory registration, ID cards will effectively be compulsory for people in certain categories and circumstances, especially foreign nationals. It may be that we need some super-affirmative procedures, not just for introducing the compulsory nature of the scheme but for the use of some of the other powers of the Secretary of State. How will the cards work in practice? The first public interest benefit is that of working against terrorism. It is estimated that two thirds of terrorists operate under their own identity, but others would still be able to create a false identity. What particularly worries me is the existence of a high-integrity scheme which might even strengthen the position of terrorists who are able to manipulate it. The Minister in opening said that identity cards would create obstacles for those who assist terrorists by providing funding, false identities and secret locations. I accept that, but if a terrorist obtained a false identity card, society would be put at an even greater risk. The second public interest benefit is that it will help in the broader struggle against crime prevention, but we know that that is heavily contested. The Law Society argues that in crime detection the main problem lies not in establishing an individual’s identity but in linking the individual to a particular crime. The third and fourth public interest reasons are the aims of preventing illegal immigration and illegal working. But we know that they depend on employers operating identity checks conscientiously and efficiently. The prevention of identity theft and fraud must contend with sophisticated forms of counterfeiting and requires absolute security in the enrolment process. Given the number of people who work day and night in order to break into computer systems around the world, I suspect that already some people are trying to work out how they might devise false identities if the scheme is introduced. We are up against some sophisticated and intelligent people. As has already been mentioned—I shall refer to it only briefly—the real worry is expressed by members of minority ethnic communities as regards the purpose of law enforcement, illegal immigration and terrorism. There is a real concern that that will mean even more targeting of black and Asian people. The earlier concerns echoed by the Home Affairs Committee, which have to some extent been taken into account by the Government, still exist in the minds of many people. I shall not mention the other concerns because other people are much better qualified to speak on them. A great many problems with the technical operation of the scheme and its cost are often discussed and there is a huge disparity between the figures that we have heard from the Government on the one hand and the LSE on the other. I hope that by the end of this debate we can have some agreement about what the scheme will cost because it seems that it will be a very large amount indeed. In conclusion, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said that he is very glad that he is not on someone’s list, but we are already on a lot of people’s lists. We need to take seriously what is in the public interest. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, does. In principle, I support the idea of identity cards, but more work clearly has to be done to convince people that they are in the public interest. The real worry is that if the scheme went wrong in certain areas it might do a great deal more harm than good.