UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 14A: 14A: Clause 5, page 3, leave out line 32 and insert ““which may include the following non-biometric information— (i) name, (ii) date of birth, (iii) place of birth, (iv) address, (v) immigration status, and (vi)National Insurance number, if appropriate;”” The noble Lord said: As the Committee no doubt realises, this amendment follows a similar one we tabled in another place concerning the non-biometric information which may be included in the BID. At present it is a completely open-ended question that is not even confined to information about the holder of the document. It could be information about any other matter. The Minister in another place said that it was important to capture a great deal of information that was not set out in the amendment. He went on to give examples, including two items that do appear in our list and two that do not: nationality and gender. If the Government are prepared to accept in principle that there should be a list, we would be perfectly happy to add those items to the ones already set out in our amendment. The object of the exercise is to specify what non-biometric information is to be included rather than to allow the Secretary of State to add any information he likes without even coming back to Parliament for approval. If that is not palatable, would the Government agree to an amendment that would limit the non-biometric information at least to facts relevant to a person’s immigration status? Earlier, the Minister referred to EU proposals for biometric resident permits and said that we need to ensure that the BID satisfies the conditions of that forthcoming regulation—I entirely agree with that proposal. Can the Minister give us further details of that proposal, and in particular let us know where we can find it on the EU website, which in my experience is not easy to navigate? Will he also say whether the Government would agree to restrict the non-biometric information to what may be required for the purpose of compatibility with the EU resident’s document, to which the UK may agree in future? Further, can we have an assurance that the data protection regime that applies to this information will comply fully with the regime covering the EU resident document? I certainly hope that we are going to have some answers to our questions this afternoon. On Monday, we were not very successful in getting the information we were asking for, particularly about judicial review. However, I am grateful to the Minister for his earlier assurance that he would write to us. Indeed, he has already done so following Monday’s proceedings. If we do not get answers in Grand Committee, I hope that at least we can have a further letter from the Minister dealing with any points he may have missed this afternoon. I beg to move.