Identity Cards Bill

I share the concerns of both noble Lords who have spoken, but I think that we are looking at this in the wrong way. I rather feel as though we are trying to stop the Thames by standing in the middle of it. The fact is that DNA data will be, if not directly part of this database, linked to it. The police will have an extensive range of DNA data. In a few years’ time—I think that three years is the current estimate—when we are able to take and analyse DNA samples on a while-you-wait basis, DNA analysis will start to become part of everyday medicine so that we know to which diseases we are liable and how we are liable to react to particular drugs. It will become a very important personalising part of medical treatment and, on that basis, our DNA records will become extremely widely available. With facial biometrics on the ID card, combined with high-quality cameras all over the country, we will be able to tell exactly who is where in which street at any part of the day. We are getting ourselves—for the very best of reasons—into a surveillance society where potentially the Government will know exactly what each of us is doing at any time. If we combine that with the information which will be available from commercial databases and therefore accessible by the Government based on RFID technology as that comes in, we will be absolutely pinned down whenever the Government reach the point of wanting to know what we are up to. Rather than try to pretend that we can stop the march of technology, we should be looking at an equivalent of the Data Protection Registrar. We should be looking at a body which can operate on principles rather than detailed legislation, which can say where our rights to privacy and personal information really begin and end, and which, on that sort of basis, can control what the Government and other people do with it. To imagine that we can stop technological progress in this way is illusory. We should not think that gives us any safety, given the time scales we are talking about for identity cards in this Bill.