Identity Cards Bill

I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, will feel that his virtue and persistence will have its own rewards in relation to these amendments. Amendment No. 211 suggests a drafting change to Clause 20(2). We do not think the amendment changes the sense of the clause but on this occasion I am happy to accommodate the noble Lord’s suggestion. I will therefore undertake to return to the House at Report with a government amendment that reflects the suggestion made by the noble Lord. The same formulation appears in subsection (3) and for the sake of consistency I will deal with that as well. Clause 20 sets out the relationship between the Identity Cards Bill and certain disclosure provisions under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001; specifically how information from the register could be provided without consent for purposes set out in Section 17 of that Act. We have discussed this in part already, but Section 17 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 was, as the noble Lord knows, enacted to ensure that public authorities could disclose information that is subject to statutory restriction on disclosure for the purposes of a criminal investigation or criminal proceedings. Clause 20 of the Identity Cards Bill ensures that information from the register can be provided without consent for the purposes specified in Section 17(2) (a) to (d) of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, provided that the rules set out in and made under Clause 23 of the Identity Cards Bill apply and comply with it. Amendment No. 210ZA would have the effect that the Secretary of State could disclose information from the register under Clause 20 only to a public authority rather than a person. From the import of what the noble Lord said, I take it that he is really concerned that private prosecutors and private prosecutions could not be facilitated through these provisions. That is what he is really getting at. However, Amendment No. 210ZA cannot be accepted because a public authority is defined in Clause 43 by reference to the Human Rights Act. This definition would exclude prosecuting authorities overseas and would mean that the new agency would have no power to provide information to these bodies. I believe that it is right that the new agency should be able to disclose information to prosecuting authorities overseas in certain specified circumstances. We are happy, however, to give a commitment to excluding the provision of information to individuals conducting private prosecutions under the regulations under Clause 23. We never intended private prosecutors to take advantage of these provisions, so we are happy to make that crystal clear. I thank the noble Lord for the amendment that highlights the difficulty and enables us to close the gap. So the noble Lord has two strikes against three so far. With Amendment No. 213A, we may have a hat trick, because what the noble Lord seeks from me is an unequivocal statement about proportionality. I assure him that the requirement to act proportionately in providing information will apply automatically by virtue of the Data Protection and Human Rights Acts. Therefore, it is not necessary to restate it here. Stating it in Clause 20 alone might suggest that there was no need to act proportionately when providing information under the other powers in the Bill. I know that that is not what the noble Lord or the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe, want; they want me to make my full and frank disclosure, which I am very happy to do. Structural safeguards will be built into the scheme to ensure proportionality; we spoke about them earlier in Committee. I refer to the accreditation system, the differentiation that we are going to have and all the different agencies, for all the reasons that I have already given. I hope that noble Lords would not want me to repeat all that. I hope that the noble Lord will be delighted to withdraw his amendment on the basis that he has succeeded in every respect.