Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, perhaps I may, from these Benches, express my support for this amendment. As many of my noble friends know, I take great exception to the idea of identity cards because, like the noble Lord, Lord Thomas—our historian—I believe that it flies in the face of the great traditions of this country. The fact that we are nation built on the common law is not without significance. The common law was built on the acceptance and understanding that we should approach power with a degree of scepticism. Unlike the rest of Europe, which had the Napoleonic code, we in Britain, including Scotland, incorporated into our system of law the idea that power can be abused and that, therefore, there should always be a burden on the state to prove things. Citizens did not have to go around proving their existence or allowing their status to be challenged. What is interesting about that is that it created the spirit of the British character and is why I believe that we never surrendered to totalitarianism in any form. In this country we have not had sufficient debate about the implications of the Bill for the relationship between the citizen and the state. The state is there at our behest. The citizen is not there at the behest of the state. That is what is not understood by the Government, I am afraid, in creating this change, which came about unfortunately because of what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, referred to—that those who are involved in the incredible business of new technology can become excited about it. I know that from my own field—I chair the Human Genetics Commission. It is very easy for those involved to say, ““We can do this””, and persuade people that because you can do something you should do it. This is one of those areas where the Government were persuaded that because this could be done technologically, it should be done. That is a serious error. Let us look for a minute at voluntarism and compulsion. I take the view, as do others, that we are seeing compulsion introduced by the back door. I am not making the interpretation as a lawyer would, but I would easily be able to persuade a jury that my party’s manifesto said that ID cards would be voluntary and that there would be legislation before they could be introduced on a compulsory basis. That is what the majority of people who read that manifesto would have taken from it. In this new method of acquiring the card, we are seeing compulsion, because if I apply for a new passport, which I am due to in a couple of years, I will be required to have an identity card—and I do not want one. There will be no opportunity for me to say that I do not want that additional element. I happen to believe that the new, upgraded passport is a good thing. I have no objection to the improvement in a passport that contains new material, but I object to an internal passport in our country, in our nation. We should be deeply concerned about that. By designating documents such as a passport, a driving licence or the check certificate that people have to obtain from the Criminal Records Bureau for certain jobs, the Home Office will be able to force more than 95 per cent of the population onto the National Identity Register. Let us not pretend that there is no compulsion and that it was not referred to in the manifesto. If I want to travel abroad, drive my car or keep my job, you can be sure that I will have no choice. That is not the way to legislate and that is why this amendment is right and absolutely does not offend against the Salisbury convention—and it is the duty of this House, in its care for the rule of law, the common law and the traditions of our nation, to take exception to the compulsory nature of these cards.