Identity Cards Bill

These amendments raise the issue of the level of fault necessary to fall foul of the civil penalty regime. By ensuring that individuals will be liable only to a civil penalty if they intentionally contravene an order to register themselves, the amendments will protect those who, through ignorance, inability or pure mistake, do not meet the deadlines or details of the order. The order may not have been served at the correct address or the individual may never receive the order due to illness, change of address or for any number of reasons. To impose a form of strict liability on the individual for breaches of such an order, no matter how blameless the failure to comply, is neither fair nor reasonable. It does not allow for the circumstances of the individual to be taken into account. No doubt the Minister will seek to allay the concerns raised here by saying that by virtue of Clause 35 there is a right of appeal to the county court. However, although an important safeguard, that should not allow Clause 6 to pass unnoticed. As it stands it is draconian in the extreme. It implements a system of arbitrary fines and penalties, the impact of which would invariably fall most heavily on the section of the population that is most likely not to be able to meet the requirements of an order and who could least afford to pay—the elderly and students being the most obvious examples. The appeals process proposed in Clause 35 is not exactly comfort to the pensioner who has to battle against the Home Secretary’s decision in the county court. A county court summons could be a very frightening experience for some people and employing lawyers to represent one in the county court is an expensive option and way beyond the means of some people, particularly the elderly and the most vulnerable. The court system is already over burdened and all the scheme will achieve is to over burden it more. The parking fine system and the speed camera system were referred to in another place as deeply unpopular schemes. If this scheme is allowed to go ahead it will likewise cause widespread resentment and unnecessary and costly hearings in county courts across the country. The size of the potential fine, or whatever one calls it—£2,500—is tantamount to a criminal penalty in practice if not in theory. That is all the more reason to introduce a fault requirement if a penalty is to be imposed. Setting that threshold at the level of intention is reasonable and proportionate: it will prevent the deliberate disregarding of any order and therefore is all that is necessary to meet the aims of Clause 6 and the civil penalty regime. Any more than that and the Bill risks introducing a scheme that will be extremely unfair. As my honourable friend Mr Mercer said in Committee in another place:"““We are fooling ourselves if we think that we are setting up a nice friendly system. We are talking about coercion driven by money and the extraction of money from the individual in which the individual has to establish, albeit on the civil standard, that he is free of the obligation imposed on him by the Secretary of State””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee D, 12/7/05; col. 203.]" By inserting the requirement that an order must have been contravened intentionally, the amendment would shift the burden to the Secretary of State to prove that this was the case, albeit on the civil standard of proof.