UK Borders Bill

Clause 8 provides a link between the information contained on the document and the information that would be held on the national identity register created by the Identity Cards Act 2006. It allows regulations to permit the use of information for specified purposes not related to immigration, and it provides that there is no need to destroy information if it is retained in accordance with other enactments. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants has argued that this could be seen as an intention by the Government to collect data for the purposes of enforcing destitution, such as we were discussing earlier, and denying healthcare in some scenarios, which could breach the UK’s human rights obligations under various international instruments. The JCWI foresees that the effect of the enforced destitution regime of immigration control, coupled with the universal registration of non-EEA nationals before the rest of the population, will lead to a culture where officials routinely demand production of BIDs and people will effectively be compelled to carry them. It believes that a culture of biometric data collection, sharing and checking of associated biometric documentation against registers will mean discrimination against visible minorities in the UK. To some extent, that was confirmed by the discussion that we had earlier, when the Minister did not see anything odd in an employer requiring a person of Somali appearance to produce a BID, although he did to some extent correct himself later on, when he said that national insurance documentation would be perfectly satisfactory if that was available. The JCWI believes that this culture will mean discrimination against visible minorities in the UK. It cites in support of that claim the fact that in several European countries where identity documents are already compulsory ethnic minorities are disproportionately checked. We fear that the same is likely to happen in this country. We fear above all that the introduction of BIDs will systematise the destitution of hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants now surviving in the parallel economy, with disastrous consequences not only for the migrants themselves but for the local authorities, charities and faith groups who will have to bear the burden of responding to this widespread destitution in one form or another. It will have a particularly adverse effect in London and other urban areas where migrant populations are disproportionately concentrated. Before the scheme is introduced, I beg the Government to come up with a strategy to deal with the problem. Perhaps the Minister could begin by telling the Committee this afternoon what they propose to do, when BIDs are introduced, about the 100,000 irregular migrants and failed asylum seekers from Zimbabwe.