Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, with the forbearance of the House, I will take you on a short journey of changing public attitudes. Twenty years ago we lived in an almost entirely different world. When people were asked in 1985 by Gallup—a polling organisation that no longer really exists in Britain—what was the most urgent problem facing Britain, 75 per cent said unemployment, 10 per cent said strikes, only two per cent said crime and none said immigration. Compare that picture to today. When MORI asked in September what were the most important issues facing Britain today, it found defence, international terrorism and security were top with 46 per cent. Race relations, immigration and asylum were second with 32 per cent. Crime was fourth, with 25 per cent. This is a transformed landscape, a wholly new world, and one I have seen slowly emerge over the years that I have been doing this kind of work. Inch by inch the terrain has altered, so that now the whole map is vastly different. The emergence of immigration, crime, security and terror do not mean that the electorate has become more racist or more authoritarian; in fact quite the reverse, as I will show. It does mean, however, that the prism through which the citizen views the world has changed, just as surely as the world has changed around the citizen. New challenges have emerged, and a new agenda has been built. Politics is never still. The enduring concerns of the economy and public services remain but they have been joined by a new politics; I call this the politics of identity and of security. This new politics has emerged as a reaction to a constellation of new forces. People are part of a world in which they experience constant change and see and feel global forces touch their very lives. Globalisation may be universal in its influence but it is local in its impact. In a sense, every individual and every community is at the epicentre of their own constellation of change. Nothing is immune from that—not employment, not skills, not migration, not terror, not religion, not crime, and, now, not disease. In the face of that people have mixed feelings—not confused feelings so much as mixed feelings. Often, and increasingly, they cope with confidence, and that is the good news in all of this. But they also feel insecure, threatened and unsure. Communities, values and patterns of life appear to be changing in unpredictable and disturbing ways. The public’s response to that is balanced. For of the most part they are tolerant and open to change. But the public also feel that the long-established relationship between responsibility and rights is being eroded. They sense that the glue that held communities together is weakening. They support immigration but deplore abuse of immigration procedures. They want increased investment in public services and will pay the taxes necessary to finance them but resent those who abuse public services without contributing fairly to the costs. They do not break laws themselves but feel that sometimes law breakers escape too easily and too lightly. But they do not, except on the extreme and contemptible fringe, retreat into retribution or racism or reaction. If they do so, I believe that they do so less. The British at their core are tolerant and fair, but they know that the world is changing and old solutions will not work any more. They want new responses that recognise the changed reality of their lives. At its heart, this velocity of change threatens not just jobs or way of life but identity—who we are, where we are, where we belong, what is our basic sense of self. In the past the answers were easy. We lived in communities affirmed by longstanding relations, patterns of life and clear and fixed symbols of identity; but no longer. We now inhabit a complex, fast-moving and cosmopolitan world where who we are is multi-faceted and fluid. Now even personal identity—who you are—can be stolen. Although traditional ties of community are fragmenting, the impulse to belong is not weakened. In fact the opposite is true: the greater the flux, the more the importance of identity. People want to be citizens. They want to contribute. They want to belong to the community and the nation and they want this contribution to be recognised and they want it to be respected. That is why, when the public were consulted about identity cards, the first reason they gave for supporting them was an,"““enhanced sense of community, a visible means to feel pride in citizenship””." I will read that again:"““enhanced sense of community, a visible means to feel pride in citizenship””." That is why they want identity cards. The second reason was ““psychological security””, and the third was the ease with which it allowed people ““to confirm identity””. That is also why the NO to ID cards campaign is wrong to argue that identity cards represent the,"““arbitrary control of personal identity””." The opposite is true. Identity cards represent for most people not the control of identity but its affirmation. Identity cards in this new world are a symbol of identity—a badge of good citizenship, a sign of belonging. They can help form the core of a new social contract in which rights and responsibilities are seen to balance and which in turn helps to glue our communities together once more. Each of the specific benefits of identity cards is individually important and each has been discussed endlessly today. I will repeat them quickly. They will help to reduce identity theft, which is now a very serious and rising concern at every level. People are very concerned about that. Identity cards will help to curtail illegal immigration and start to facilitate a more balanced and less-heated argument about the intrinsic benefits of immigration itself. They will help to ensure that those holding a position or employed in a position of trust are who they say they are. They will help stop fraud and waste in the public services and they will play their part in combating crime and terror. But in their essence identity cards go further: they affirm identity in a world of flux. They are the opposite of identity theft. However, the protection of identity, important though it is, is just one part of the complex response we must all make to the challenge of the new politics. I noticed that one of the forthcoming Hamlyn lectures—I think that there will be one at the LSE soon—will argue that this new age of uncertainty and anxiety puts huge pressure on human rights, which is why the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law has been so important. I believe that that is true. One of the very many things I have learnt from this House is how the European Convention on Human Rights has become part of the usual currency of political debate. The convention has become the benchmark by which legislation must be tested and the test by which it must pass. In its way, the European Convention on Human Rights and its incorporation into British law was a necessary response to a new world of global uncertainty and pressure. Human rights were affirmed, codified and fixed. In a related way, the introduction of identity cards will affirm identity and give fixed concrete expression to people’s desire to belong and to be recognised as good citizens. My point is plain. This new world demands new approaches. Identity cards and the codification of human rights do not herald from different parts of the political spectrum but form a connected response to the same challenge: how to protect and enhance the individual in the face of anxiety, insecurity and global change. I certainly do not believe that the protection of human rights and the protection of identity are in some way in inevitable conflict. I absolutely do not believe that. Instead, they are part of a shared and mutually reinforcing attempt to respond appropriately to the new political world that we inhabit. I know that there are many in this House, and I have heard it today, who have serious doubts about the Bill. Those reservations are honorable and deep-rooted, and of course those views must be respected and those arguments made. But I say to the House this evening that, in the end, the House has a choice: to stay entangled in the fault lines of the past or to move forward and meet new challenges with new approaches. The public want identity cards. They have supported them at a general election and they support them still. On this occasion the public are right. They have voted for identity cards and should have the right to have them, to use them and to have their identity affirmed. I believe that the House should support the Bill.