UK Borders Bill

I think the Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee can go to the back of the class. The Minister gave a perfectly rational and reasonable explanation of the Government’s policy, but no matter how good his motives are, the machinery with which he is trying to implement that policy is flawed, because the Government are unfit for purpose. We have here a Bill that is designed to sneak corrections to the Identity Cards Act 2005 through the back door. We have here a Bill that is designed to persuade us that, by introducing biometric passports and by introducing biometrics to immigrants’ residential status documents, the Government are about to achieve something wonderful. But we all know that the Government have changed their mind time after time on biometrics. We now know—because the Minister admitted it in a written statement just before Christmas—that instead of one great computer, which I dare say the Government now accept would be unsafe, open to hacking and incapable of providing the service that it was designed to provide, they propose to establish three separate vast computers, which will no doubt fail to communicate with each other, fail to be produced according to budget, and fail to perform the task that the Government think they have set them. The Government have mishandled the whole issue of biometrics. There is not a Conservative Member, and I dare say there is not a Labour Member either, who disagrees with the notion that there should be biometric passports. That means that when we present our passports at the port of entry, an immigration officer can read the information contained in the chip and verify our identity. Where we—Conservative Members, at least—part company with the Government is on the use of the biometric system on the identity card as a key to that great national computer, the national identity register. Here we see the Government at sixes and sevens: they really do not understand what they wish to derive from identity cards and the biometric system. I mentioned regulations earlier. It is clear that, like the Identity Cards Act, the Bill is no more than a Christmas tree on which the Government will hang as yet undrafted, unseen regulations. The scope of the registration regulations is extremely broad, and the bulk of the detail will be in regulations made by the Secretary of State. We need only look at the Bill to see that the Secretary of State will have power to make regulations that may include open-ended obligations. For example, there will be regulations requiring the use of a document when a question arises about a person’s status in relation to nationality or immigration. A person producing that document will be required to provide other information for comparison, and there is potentially unlimited scope in regard to the information that can be required. Regulations will make provision as to the content of documents that include non-biometric information and allow for the document to be combined with other documents. All those powers are handed over to the Secretary of State—powers that are untrammelled by detailed knowledge of the wording of the regulations. The regulations can require the document holder to notify the Secretary of State at any time stipulated by regulations—further regulations—and require the surrender of the document or any other documents. Sanctions for failure to comply with any of the regulations can carry be severe. While the financial penalty is limited so far to a £1,000 fine, more drastic steps such as the cancellation of leave to remain in the UK can also be imposed. Clause 8 provides a direct link between the information contained in the document and the information that will be held on the national identity register created by the Identity Cards Act. That allows regulations to permit the use of information for specified purposes not relating to immigration, and provides that there is no need to destroy information if it is retained in accordance with another enactments. Therefore, the scope of the regulations is extremely broad. They can theoretically force any non-European economic area person to provide unlimited information for unlimited—[Interruption.]