Identity Cards Bill

moved Amendment No. 228:"Page 21, line 43, at end insert—" ““(   )   The Commissioner shall establish and operate a system to deal with individual complaints concerning the functioning of the Register and the use of information on it under the provisions of this Act in accordance with an order made by the Secretary of State.”” The noble Lord said: A good deal of the substance of Amendment No. 228 has been dealt with by what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said on the last group of amendments and what the Minister said in response. There were contributions to that debate by various noble Lords, so I shall keep this brief. To reassure the House, I propose to withdraw Amendment No. 229 in the interests of getting through the remaining business, but I do not think that the Government have given sufficient thought to the importance of complaints. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, was correct in saying that there is not much comparison to be made between complaints to the passport office and the sort of complaints that we will have to contend with under the Bill. For a start, the day when having identity cards will be compulsory will, I suggest, be a contentious day. I know that many noble Lords think this is a straightforward managerial piece of legislation which nobody should object to but, believe me, millions of people are unhappy about it. Whether one is talking about designating the renewal of passports as having to be accompanied by ID cards or the day when 100 per cent of the public have to have them, I think one must anticipate a considerable amount of citizen unrest. Under Clause 5(5), when an ID card is issued, citizens must go for an interview, allow fingerprints to be taken, allow themselves to be photographed and otherwise allow themselves to be dealt with as the Secretary of State may require. The potential for upset is of a wholly different order from that involved in getting passports. Under the Bill, there is a penalty regime attached to failures; there is no penalty regime with regard to passports. To have nothing in the Bill that refers to complaints seems almost wilful. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is as keen as I am to have the Bill that emerges from this place in a form which is helpful to the public, not one which needs a textbook to interpret it. I fear, day by day, that that is where we are headed. The complexities of many of these clauses are such that only a textbook will do; one will need a lawyer specialising in ID law to steer one around. Everybody groans—I groan myself—but that is the reality. However, I was comforted by the noble Baroness making it clear that the language of the Bill, although it makes no reference to complaints, is intended to give the commissioner a general oversight role—not to deal as a front-line recipient of complaints, but to see whether the scheme is working well or badly and, as part of her report, to make suggestions to Parliament, the Secretary of State, and so on. With regard to Report, I would be grateful if the noble Baroness would think more about this in terms of the language of the Bill. I cannot see why there should not be a reference in the relevant clause to this very important role. I would be perfectly happy if the role was not that of a front-line recipient but of a general overseer. That would be reassuring for the public and would be helpful as authenticating the role of the commissioner vis-à-vis the complaints system. For all those reasons, and many others, I commend the amendment to the Committee. Perhaps I may read from the October report on the Bill of the Select Committee on the Constitution. Paragraph 9 of Appendix 1 states:"““We believe this provision””—" that is to say, laying the report before Parliament rather than the Secretary of State—"““might be strengthened, to general advantage, in three ways. First, the Commissioner should be independent of the Secretary of State; second, his powers should be extended to include such matters as investigation of complaints””." I have already conceded that if the commissioner were not charged with getting into the role of answering complaints generally, that would be sensible enough. The Minister will not have reflected the views of us who are keen on this amendment by saying that one could always go to the Parliamentary Ombudsman. The Parliamentary Ombudsman is an extremely distant creature for most of us. If you were to conduct a poll on the high streets of Great Britain, not one in 100 people would have any idea of what the Parliamentary Ombudsman really does. In any event, one can only get to the Parliamentary Ombudsman through an MP. Why should one burden an already burdened group of good men and women with very many complaints? I can assure the noble Baroness that it would make the 8,000 or so complaints to which she referred look tiny. I say that without any happiness. We need to provide something better between the citizen and the courts, or the citizen and the Parliamentary Ombudsman, than a void. I beg to move.