Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, has given us a fairly good series of reasons why the Bill is simply enabling legislation at this stage. Despite a sore throat, I must thoroughly welcome the Bill, as I welcome the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Soley, with whom I spent many an evening in the other place filibustering during those difficult years. I have argued for the Bill since 1994 and repeatedly called for its introduction in the 1997–2001 Parliament, often to the consternation of colleagues behind me on the green Benches, who would occasionally reward my interventions with a growl or a grunt of disapproval. How times have changed. My first reason for supporting ID cards stems from my experience as a student in Paris in the early 1960s, at a time of conflict in Algeria. For a period, Paris was a city in fear of bombing, as the FLN and the OAS fought out their squabbles on the streets. With that came the frequent intervention of the riot police in their Black Marias, picking up people at random for identity checks and sometimes rougher treatment. My problem was that as a teenager I had a distinctly southern European, even Algerian, look about me. I was therefore a target for the CRS, and my only defence was my French identity card, which I learnt always to carry with me. It was a very effective defence against the excesses of the French state. I am absolutely sure that without it, I would have ended up in a Black Maria to be carried off for questioning, probably behind the concrete fortifications in the gendarmerie on the Rue Soufflot, which I remember well. I have never forgotten that experience. In times of tension, minorities have the most to benefit from ID cards. All I ask is that when an individual is required to provide evidence of identity, the ID number is recorded by the police officer concerned. We do not need 10-minute form-filling exercises, just the number on the card. That would ensure the sensitive treatment of minority groups. Database monitoring would soon reveal the targeting of minorities. My second reason for supporting the Bill is our clear commitment in the manifesto. It is the position that I took on tuition fees, where I repeatedly voted against the Government. In my view, manifesto commitments are solemn undertakings given to the people. We have no right to break our word. Indeed, it is unprincipled. My third reason is that the public want the cards. I know there are those in the other place who argue that asking the limited question ““Do you want a national identity card?”” does not commit the respondent to a national register. But the public are not stupid. They know that a national identity card without a back-up register is a worthless piece of plastic open to fraud. It would be as useless as a debit or Switch card without a bank account. My fourth reason is the huge benefits that would arise from the scheme, many of which have already been referred by my noble friends and others in all parts of the House. I will add a few that are more controversial. There is a huge black economy in the United Kingdom. Some people estimate its value to be in the order of £10 billion. I suspect that it is a lot larger than that. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who are simply outside the system. They do not pay income tax, they do not pay national insurance contributions, and they avoid capital gains tax on share transactions. Thankfully, we catch many property transactions through stamp duty. They also do not pay tax on dividends. They trade above the VAT registration thresholds, and the loss of input offsets does not worry them at all. They do not pay taxes on rental income and totally escape capital transfer tax. Indeed, many here today will know some of the people I am referring to. Just look at the amount of property in London, in the form of apartments and office accommodation, owned by companies based overseas with untraceable shareholders who often live anonymously in the UK, while the person on PAYE picks up the tab. People are getting tired of all that. One of the greatest benefits of the national identity card will be a vast increase in the tax take. It will far exceed the cost of card introduction—even the wildest estimates in the LSE study. Another more controversial consideration is the use of cards to gain access to airline transport. They keep telling us that 9/11 could not have been avoided with the use of identity cards. Is that true? I understand that all the 9/11 bombers were already known to the FBI or the CIA and were recorded on their databases. We have that information from the various inquiries that have been carried out in America. If the legal requirements of the United States of America had included the swiping of a biometric data card at the hand luggage security checkpoint at embarkation, it would have triggered a red light alert as the information hit the national databases. Further biometric reader checks would have confirmed the element of risk attached to the particular passengers, and those terrorist passengers would not have even got on to the aeroplanes. Indeed, they probably would not even have tried to do so. It is only a matter of time before we have a worldwide system of biometric identification for all airline passengers; a system based not just on passports, which are not called for on domestic flights. What are my reservations? My first reservation is that we forget that civil liberty for the man on the Clapham omnibus is that his bus will reach its final destination. The public do not want this whole exercise to be driven off course by concessions to an élitist, liberal establishment. I say that as someone who represented real people in the Commons over 22 years. I was ever worried about the disconnection between the people and Parliament. People were always complaining about the failure of Parliament to deal with real world problems. My second reservation is that the biometrics would exclude DNA. Charles Clarke, whose clear-sighted commitment to the whole process is an example to every Secretary of State, especially at the moment, should consider the inclusion of biometric detail in the form of DNA. I know that his reservation is based on civil libertarian considerations. But Charles, why not let the public decide by giving them the option of offering DNA data for inclusion? Millions would volunteer. Some might say that it would be the wrong millions, but with a foot in the door it would soon become mandatory as part of the long-term exercise that we are engaged in. The implications of the use of DNA for the criminal justice system are immense and well documented on the basis of existing collection arrangements. I suspect that the only people who would lose out would be the lawyers for the defence. Imagine the benefits in investigating rape, murder, burglary, child molestation, major robbery, drug dealing and a host of other cases. If you want to measure the confidence held by the general public in DNA, you need do no more than watch those appalling but inevitably tragic early morning television programmes. The subject is always Who-Did-What-To-Whom-And-When. The public queue up in their role as voyeurs to witness circumstances in which DNA is used as a substitute for Pentothal or a judicial hearing. Finally, I want to turn to the subject of biometric error. I am no mathematician, and I am sure that the Joint Matriculation Board of 1958 would agree, but I would wager that the odds on an error in a multi-biometric matching are infinitesimal. If you add to that DNA data, the chances of error must venture into the world of astrophysical calculation. On top of that you have to convince a jury, in whom some in this House place so much faith. I have seen too many miscarriages of justice in my lifetime. ““Jury guessing””, I call it, like word-against-word decisions in rape trials without evidence. As noble Lords can see, I am pretty keen on the Bill, just like the general public.