Identity Cards Bill

Although I hope that I will be as lucid as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, would like, I confess that on my third day at the Dispatch Box, lucidity is something to which I cannot proclaim to still have hold. Amendment No. 141 reflects a misunderstanding of subsections (1) and (2) of Clause 8. Those subsections do not confer any power to use the card or the information on it for particular purposes. Those issues are dealt with in other parts of the Bill. Subsection (1) contains the definition of an identity card, so if a card meets the description of both paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (2), it is within the definition of an ID card in subsection (1) and it is therefore an ID card for the purposes of the Bill. I invite the noble Lord’s attention for that purpose to Clause 43(1). It is necessary because an ID card may take a number of forms; for example, a stand-alone identity card or a document such as a resident’s permit for third country nationals. It will be within the definition of an ID card if it is issued by the Secretary of State or as part of or with a designated document, so it records registrable facts and can be used to check against the information in the register. Amendments Nos. 142 and 143, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, would have the effect that the ID card would not be able to contain any information of which the individual to whom the card was issued was unaware and would not be able to contain any information in an encrypted form. I assure your Lordships that we have no intention of storing identity information on the ID card that is not known to the individual. There will be some technical information on the card’s chip that we do not envisage revealing in explicit detail to the individual. Such information concerns the card’s security features and its ability to be read by specific card readers—and the reasons for that are absolutely clear. But that information certainly contains no additional identity information and, if I may respectfully say so, that technical data is nothing new. Such features are absolutely common in the use of credit or debit cards today and are central to how the cards function. The encryption of information stored on the ID card is necessary to ensure that data on the card’s chip is secure and that approved readers alone are able to access it for clearly designed purposes. For example, without encryption the ID card would not meet International Civil Aviation Organisation standards for basic and enhanced access control to information on the chip of the card, and therefore would not be valid for travel. Additionally, without encryption, the possibility of implementing remote authentication technology with a potential of combating identity fraud for those using the Internet would be lost, as important technical information on the chip would be completely unprotected. With that lucid explanation, I hope that the noble Lord and the noble Earl will be satisfied.