Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 8:"Page 1, line 9, leave out ““convenient””" The noble Earl said: I certainly do not underestimate the earnestness of the Government’s desire to ensure that the scheme should be convenient. Public trust and acceptance of the scheme, and hence its convenience, is critical if it is to operate successfully. Against that background, I propose to analyse the simple question: convenient to whom? Contrary to the insistence of Home Office Ministers, for significant numbers of people, the identity cards register—I shall not weary of making the point that the register, not ID cards, is the main thrust of the Bill—is a serious matter of principle. In that regard, to state the obvious, such individuals do not regard the proposals before us as ““convenient””. As to the practicality of the scheme, on the basis of the evidence to date—here I fear that Members of the Committee opposite, not least the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will part company with my thesis—many sections of society will experience considerable difficulties when they attempt to register and/or attempt to verify their biometric details. As we all know, the trials conducted so far have revealed particular problems for some ethnic minorities and those with disabilities. More widely, if a little curiously, the introduction of biometric passports in Germany has revealed that there are particular problems in capturing the facial data of anyone who smiles. As to verification, the United States General Accounting Office report of 2002 observes—I apologise for the technospeak—that the false non-match rate for fingerprinting, that is to say, the failure of an individual’s biometric on subsequent rereading to match the properly enrolled and registered version, can be up to 36 per cent. It is accepted that the failure of facial recognition can be even higher than that. Although it is possible that, as technology develops, some of those difficulties could be resolved, considerable uncertainty attaches to the overall viability of biometric identifiers as a foolproof method of establishing identity. Quite apart from that, all the biometric identifiers that the Government have suggested as likely to be used for the scheme have already been successfully spoofed or forged by researchers. Clearly, used in the context of a whole nation sample and a one-to-many system, biometrics are far from being infallible—a situation that is likely to pertain for some considerable time. Moreover, as I understand it—perhaps the Minister could assist the Committee here by fleshing out the Government’s plans a little further—it is envisaged that there will be about 70 enrolment centres throughout the UK at which people will be able to register their biometric details. The requirement for individuals to travel long distances—the more so if they are wholly reliant on public transport—does not immediately conjure up a vision of a process that is ““convenient””. Indeed, thinking about long distances, and to reiterate a concern raised earlier by my noble friend Lord Crickhowell, what will be the position for more than 13 million—I thank my noble friend Lord Selsdon for providing the figure—UK citizens either temporarily or ordinarily resident abroad? Here, I declare a mild interest in that I am an occasional resident in the United States. As I understand the Government’s explanation of the scheme to date, it is intended that, as and when passports are designated, anyone applying for a new or replacement passport will be required to register their biometric details and be issued with the ID card element of the passport. Does that mean that any individual living abroad will have to travel to the UK to obtain the combined passport/ID card, even if they are not required to have the latter because they do not exceed the three-month residence test? What would be the position of a UK national holidaying abroad whose passport/ID card is lost or stolen? Under the scheme as currently envisaged, such individuals could effectively be rendered stateless. They could not obtain a replacement document from the in-country embassy or consular office because, so far as I am aware, there is no intention to equip them with the necessary machinery for biometric data capture. Or is it the Government’s intention that our embassies and consular offices should have such facilities, presumably at not inconsiderable cost? Again, in those circumstances, it is difficult to imagine that those scenarios could be given the tag ““convenient””. Moreover, the requirement to pay for the ID card is also an inconvenience, both in terms of perception and fact. Whatever the putative public support for ID cards is, polling evidence most assuredly shows that it dips remarkably once the cost element is factored in. To the extent that the scheme is inconvenient to the general populace, it is in turn inconvenient to the Government themselves. A central tenet of the Government’s case is that the ID register and cards will provide a certain means for the individual to establish his or her identity. That lies at the very heart of the scheme and is the single factor, in truth, on which its success or failure primarily depends. Yet, as I have already demonstrated, its biometrics, on current evidence, are incapable of delivering that—certainly not to anything like an appropriate threshold of accuracy. Given that, the worth of the scheme to both government and law enforcement is highly marginal. If the scheme does not offer convenience either to the population or to the Government and their agencies, who will derive real benefit from it? Jerry Fishenden, the national security officer of Microsoft UK, and others have made the entirely rational point that the very existence of the proposed centralised database could well give rise to,"““hi-tech ways of perpetrating massive identity fraud on a scale beyond anything we have seen before””." That is the so-called honeypot effect. Paradoxically, therefore, the scheme as drafted offers greatest convenience to those against whom the measure is purportedly intended to act: terrorists, agents of organised crime and so on. In effect, the word ““convenient”” in its context in the Bill is highly subjective. I freely admit that I am no parliamentary draftsman but my experience in your Lordships’ House has enabled me to discern that one of the principal aims of good drafting is precision. Yet the subjectivity of the word renders it imprecise, perhaps even close to inaccurate and misleading. I repeat that I in no way question the intention that the scheme should be convenient for its users, be they the Government and their agencies or the public; indeed, provision in the Bill to make that a requirement of the scheme may well be worth pursuing. But that is not what the use of the word in this context achieves. Rather, almost as an element of the dark arts of spin, it presumes and asserts that the scheme will be convenient come what may. I feel very strongly that that is wholly inappropriate for legislative drafting. In effect, it prejudges the Bill. I beg to move.