Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 216A: After Clause 22, insert the following new clause— ““POWER TO AUTHORISE PROVISION OF INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES    In a case where there is no authorisation under sections 19 to 22 for the provision of information, the Secretary of State may nevertheless, without any individual’s consent, provide a dissociated complete set or random sample of information recorded in the Register under section 1(7)(e) for the purposes of research.”” The noble Lord said: When the register is up and running, it will potentially be an extremely important source of information for all kinds of research purposes. We will have a fairly complete log of people’s movements around the UK. We will also have a much better picture of what the local population of the UK is at any particular time than is provided by rather out of date and occasional censuses. If you are trying to look at the pattern of provision in an area or, indeed, the pattern of take-up of any other service in an area, this is going to be an extremely important data resource—either by itself, or in conjunction with other databases which will then be linked with it. I do not expect—and it would not be usual—for data to be released which would allow individuals to be identified, which is the point of my use of the word ““dissociated””. I do not lay any particular claim to the accuracy of the wording of this. If there is a prohibition on providing data under any circumstances from the register for research purposes, which is the way I read the Bill at the moment, then we are going to miss an enormous opportunity for understanding our island better and providing services better. At the end of the day, the Government, wonderful though they are, do not have all the best researchers and statisticians. Going back to my own history, that was one of the tragedies of the BSE episode: the Ministry of Agriculture had some very good statisticians but they just never asked the right questions. When we eventually released the data, it took about two months for Imperial College to tell us what had been happening. They were looking at it a different way. There were fresh minds on the same data. Even the limited data which will be held here, particularly under Schedule 1(1), is going to be extremely valuable. It is important that that should be available to genuine researchers. The other aspect is Schedule 1(2). If you are seeking to defend someone in a court case against the matching of their face with an image taken by a high-resolution camera, then you are going to need to be able to understand the technicalities of that matching: how it works, under what circumstances it might be right or wrong, and what the degrees of error are. We have all had enough cases recently of spurious statistics being quoted by ““experts”” as to likelihoods and matching, and the consequences of that for families, to know that these things can go horribly wrong. Unless this database is released, it will be impossible to do fundamental research against it as to the accuracy of matching and the circumstances under which a match might be regarded as absolutely valid or doubtful. There is no reason why for this purpose it should be associated with any individuals for this purpose. All you need do is provide the biometrics, completely dissociated from any particular person, or indeed dissociated from each other. You would still have just as valid a database for research. It is very important that this tool should be available to the defence because, after all, the prosecution will have it. I beg to move.