Identity Cards Bill

If reasoned argument were to prevail, the arguments advanced by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) would see us through this day. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has said from the Front Bench, this Bill is profoundly important. It challenges the very assumptions that many of us had about what being a British citizen is, namely the freedom to move around one’s country not at the behest or let of the Government. The Government want to introduce a central data register, which seeks to look into the very depth and nature of the privacy of the citizen. That is territory that Britain has never faced before, not even through the wartime identity cards of the first world war or the second world war. The Government are seeking profoundly to change the nature of our relationship with our state. Who is the servant and who is the master? The Government assert that the state must be the master, and they are therefore challenging our very understanding of what is personal liberty and freedom. I have always argued that the essential character of the British constitution and of how we have developed through the long march of everyman is about freedom. This scheme contradicts that central, basic principle and understanding of who we are. The Government have called the ID card a voluntary card, and they have propelled that proposition on the basis that when one applies for a passport, it is, of course, a voluntary act. This is a trading nation, and the wealth and creativity of our people has been developed by engagement in the wider world—we have sought markets, and we have seen prosperity arise from that. The Government are now saying that one cannot engage in the very basis of the livelihood of this nation without applying for a passport and having an identity card linked to a central register. I do not suppose that many of us have the luxury of being able to say that we will desist from international trade or engagement with the outside world, so the compulsion lies in the necessity of having a passport. The last time that we debated this matter, many of my hon. Friends asserted that we have a right to a passport, but we have no such thing. There is no common law that grants us the right to a passport, and there is no statute that defines the nature of citizenship. An article of the Canadian constitution firmly states the freedom of Canadian citizens to leave and enter Canada, but we have no such right, because it is a matter of the royal prerogative. That is what disturbs me, because it is almost a dictum of our modern constitution that we are all equal before the law. I shall pose this question, because I want to see the Government explore the nature of our state: is the Queen to have an identity card? She is, after all, a citizen of Europe, so why should she not? Must she now have a passport—it is her prerogative, after all? Will the Prince of Wales be required to produce an identity card? I think that the Home Secretary should tell us straight whether we are all equal before the law. And why is the identity card linked to prerogative power?