Identity Cards Bill

I have three amendments in this group—Amendment No. 108, Amendment No. 155, which deals with the same arrangements in Clause 9, and Amendment No. 170A, which deals with the same arrangements in Clause 12. I cannot add anything useful to what has been said already by the noble Lords who have spoken to Amendments Nos. 106 and 107. I prefer the wording of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, to my own. If I had seen it when I sat down to prepare them I would have withheld my pen. As to the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, to require someone to attend at a specified place and time ““at his convenience”” might be taking things slightly too far the other way. It could lead to a lot of argy-bargy when someone says that it is not convenient for him to attend for the next three months. There are many problems with a scheme of this sort, which is—I must stop saying this—in world terms, a first. It seeks to establish a national register of everybody and involves everybody being interviewed before they can get an identity card and so on. One of the problems is that it gives rise to such bureaucratic problems that one ends up having to take short cuts with what one might call our normal way of doing things. It surely must be right that the requirement to attend for an interview should be subject to the particulars of the person concerned—for instance, you may dealing with an old woman who is ill, or a silly old man who is ill, or a silly young man without a motor car. One can think of so many circumstances where, unless there was some reasonable qualification of the requirement, people could be put into the position where, under Clause 33—this is the other point—they would be subject to an automatic penalty. Officials are not even required under the Bill to inquire of the person who failed to attend an interview why he or she failed to attend. They are not required to give notice of the intention to impose a penalty, they simply impose it. If you then say, ““Oh hang on, I had a heart attack the day before””, they do not say, ““Oh well, that’s all right, you can appeal to the county court””. No, they go one better than that: they say that the Secretary of State can then cancel the penalty. That is jolly good of him but, under our system, we do not impose penalties of up to £2,500 on people before we ask them the circumstances giving rise to the failure. Anyhow, enough is enough. I hope the noble Baroness will see the force of this very basic piece of British manners and allow one of these amendments.