Identity Cards Bill

I oppose the Question that Clause 4 stand part of the Bill. I do not intend to speak at length, but it is worth drawing together a few strands of the debate so far. Clause 4 is particularly troublesome, as has been made clear from our debate on the amendments moved to it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, it is a back-door means of introducing compulsion of the identity card. Those Members of the Committee dead against a compulsory card are inclined to be dead against Clause 4. As was just said, at Second Reading the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that making passports a designated document would bring in roughly 85 per cent of the adult population. For the purposes of bringing it in or for designating documents which would have the effect of compulsion, Clause 4 does not have the super-affirmative procedure that other parts of the Bill have—Clause 6, in particular. We must also consider that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee took up the fact that at Second Reading it was stated that,"““documents issued by private bodies””.—[Official Report, 31/10/05; col. 114.]" could not be designated documents for the purpose of Clause 4. It has been clear from this afternoon’s discussion that that is not so. Most people would consider the Law Society to be a private body, but for the purposes of issuing solicitors’ practising certificates, it acts in pursuance of statutory powers and, for that purpose, is a public authority and within the ambit of Clause 4. There are many examples of what the man in the street would consider a private body having such powers. It is the very breadth of the clause that is one of its unacceptable features. The powers and duties of the designated document authority are also troublesome. Clause 10 lists the functions of persons issuing designated documents. They are extremely wide. They have wide competence; they have the right to revoke designated documents and, hence, the ID cards that go with them; they have the right to require surrender of the same. One wonders just what sort of supervision of those designated bodies the Government propose, because there is little in the Bill. I suppose that they will rely on the fact that the Secretary of State can enter negotiations with a designated document authority, but that is another aspect of the whole designation procedure that we—and I think that I can speak for the Conservative Benches—find completely unacceptable. Clause 10 can be brought into effect under the negative procedure, which is worse still. Finally, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, in its report of 17 October, chose to draw the House’s attention to the provisions of Clause 4 in relation to Clause 10. In effect, it issued a warning to us. Briefly, and because there is a will on the part of many here to resist compulsion, there is a sense that Clause 4 should not stand part of the Bill.