Identity Cards Bill

As the noble Baroness knows, the statutory purposes of the identity card scheme and the national identity register that will support the scheme are twofold. The second limb of the statutory purposes in Clause 1(3)(b) is to provide the means of identification where that is in the public interest—I emphasise the public interest test. Amendments Nos. 13 and 14 address that second public interest limb of the statutory purposes. Registrable facts are set out clearly in Clause 1(5). As well as the name, date of birth and physical characteristics that could be used to identify someone, they include address, nationality or immigration status. Those are all highly relevant factors when someone needs to prove his or her identity and in meeting the public interest purposes for which the register will be established. For many transactions, it is as important to know your address—that is, where you live now—as it is to know where you were born. For a foreign national, it will be as important to know whether you are free to work here as to know your date of birth. So the reference to ““registrable facts”” in both limbs of the statutory purposes is not unnecessary verbiage but defines the ambit, the outline, of the sort of facts that we would be entitled to ask for. As the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee acknowledged in its report, which I very much welcome, the reference to ““registrable facts”” in the statutory purposes sets the outer limits of the information that may be recorded under the Bill. Many of the subsequent powers in the Bill are linked to those statutory purposes and the limitation in those purposes to the registrable facts is an important safeguard. So all those items in Schedule 1 have to fit within the framework of Clause 1(5). If we were to remove Clause 1(5), and retain the order-making power in the Bill, it would be possible for anything outwith Clause 1(5) now to be included by way of order. The Government believe that that would be wrong. As a result, it was proper to outline in Clause 1(5) the outer limits of anything that we could subsequently bring forward and to invite the House to add to those issues in Schedule 1. The noble Baroness will know that any addition to those issues would have to be done by affirmative order. The beauty of the use of the affirmative order—I think my noble friend mentioned this at Second Reading—is that we now have the powerful instrument of the committee which looks at statutory instruments; and we can scrutinise whether they are within the ambit, proper, and so on, before they even come to the House. So we have this extra safeguard. It would mean that, together with the other place, we have a proper opportunity to see whether any new additional matter which the Government chose to bring forward under Schedule 1 fits within the outline ambit which is set by Clause 1(5). That is why we think Clause 1(5) is an additional safeguard and it would be proper to keep it in place.