Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 41:"Page 2, line 26, leave out paragraph (d)." The noble Earl said: My focus in this amendment is the wording in Clause 1(7)(d),"““if he has died, the date of his death””." The inference of the current drafting is that those who have died could be required, on pain of civil liability, to record that fact on the register. It could also conceivably mean that such individuals could be required to enter in the register the address of their current abode and their residential status, again on pain of civil liability. Quite how the Government anticipate that would be achieved by an individual who is no longer sentient is beyond me. Indeed, the prospect of the register holding data from beyond the grave about every cemetery, perhaps even about burials at sea, is interesting. That aside, there is a wider issue. We can assume that the logic of the scheme is based on finding appropriate technological and IT solutions for an eventual population profile of 60 million or so individuals. As a matter of course, the amount of data held on the register will be subject to upward and downward variation as a function of demographic changes—migration, the attainment of qualifying age and so on. But the inference of the provision is that the register will hold the details of all the registrable facts, including biometrics, of all qualifying individuals, living or dead. That has implications for the IT architecture of the scheme. As a matter of course, it implies that the register has to be constructed to provide additional capacity for expansion in future, on the basis that, when someone dies, his registrable facts will be maintained. Indeed, this may be relevant to the caution sounded in KPMG’s report about a potential shortage of data storage space. Moreover, as biometric identifiers are added to the system without limit, their reliability as unique individual identifiers will degrade. I fully understand the underlying motive of the provision; namely, to make due allowance for what could be called The Day of the Jackal or the Lord Buckingham scenario. To that extent, I do not object to its inclusion per se. But it creates huge problems, not only in terms of the scheme’s IT design, but also in terms of qualifying the data of the deceased for deletion on the grounds of relevance. Without useable criteria for the deletion of such records that satisfy the requirements of the Bill and those of the data protection legislation, the register and its data run the risk of becoming wholly unwieldy. Accordingly, there is a strong argument in favour of the drafting in Clause 1(7)(d) being tightened up. I hope the Minister can explain how it is intended that the scheme will operate in respect of those who have died, without giving rise to the difficulties to which I have referred. I beg to move.