Verification of Information in Passport Applications Etc. (Specified Persons) Order 2007

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for putting those questions. I have further questions for the Minister and, like the noble Lord, I say that if the Minister cannot reply today, I do not want to delay the House, so he may care to write to me. As the Minister said, we are seriously concerned about matters of identity fraud and passport fraud. Figures that have been repeatedly supplied to your Lordships’ House give rise to serious concern about those matters. I am glad that my noble friend, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, is sitting next to me, because he has been very prominent in issues relating to the whole subject. Let me say at the beginning that we believe strongly that we must do everything possible to make our borders secure. On that, there is no dispute. The Minister will have seen that by the contribution that we are making on the UK Borders Bill at the moment. That is our purpose. We do not want passports to be issued and then used for fraudulent purposes in any way. I have read the instrument and the Explanatory Note and listened to the Minister’s assurance about the use of the information. I have a problem with the manner in which a section of the SI is laid out. The SI contains a requirement to which the Minister referred when he talked about what would happen if a credit reference agency refused to provide information. However, it is clear in the Explanatory Note that there is a requirement for the credit reference agency to produce information concerning the identity of individuals. That provision is not subject to the constraint to which we feel that it ought to be on background information. There is no requirement in the statutory instrument and therefore no guarantee that the information should be destroyed and that the Identity and Passport Service must confine itself to the limited information to which we have referred. My concern about the statutory instrument is not about what it seeks to achieve. I have absolutely no problem with what the Minister has said about what information should be provided. I want government officials to be given power to stamp out fraudulent passports.