UK Borders Bill

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for tabling her amendments. I am grateful, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for spelling out his concerns. Amendment No. 15 would fundamentally undermine one of the aims of the biometric registration scheme. We want to ensure that foreign nationals subject to immigration control and legally in the United Kingdom are issued with a biometric immigration document. These documents will act also as an identity card once they have been designated under the Identity Cards Act. If Clause 5(2)(e) were removed, the biometric immigration document could not be combined with an ID card. Therefore, when the Secretary of State decides to designate biometric immigration documents for the purposes of registration under the Identity Cards Act 2006, foreign nationals affected would have to carry two cards.