Identity Documents Bill

I add my heartfelt congratulations to those expressed by others on your elevation to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also add my congratulations to all those whom I have heard make their maiden speeches today. I well remember how awful mine was. By contrast, theirs shame me. Fortunately, the height of these Benches prevents the world from seeing that one's knees are trembling, and mine certainly were—my mouth was dry and I have never dared read the speech again. I hope that the section of the Common's files are burnt down. I can express only my admiration for the maiden speeches. Certain things said had a theme that related to the Bill that we are debating today, as well as to the purpose of maiden speeches. I am proud to be in this House with a large number of new Members who were elected to represent distinctive constituencies. They will judge the national interest on behalf of those they represent. That is no easy task, unless they always follow the guidance of the Whips. In fact, it turns upon Members sometimes, because the making of law and the holding of Governments to account is what we are involved in. The judgment involved in creating criminal law, which is behind the Bill before us, is a very solemn responsibility. I have always maintained that the function of this House and the history of this nation is the long march of everyman to safeguard liberty. It was not easily won, but it was accomplished, as is seen in the changing nature of this House from first being merely the King's House and then an oligarch's House in the 18th century to the early stages of the 1832 Reform Bill—even if the Deputy Prime Minister is not as familiar with his history as he might have been—and then to the great achievement of Disraeli's Reform Bill of 1867, from which we became a free people. John Bright, whose statue stands outside this Chamber, on his annual visit to Birmingham all those years ago asked why Englishmen should be slaves in their own country. That is what led to the 1867 Bill. The majority of people in England did not have the vote at that time—an Englishman in Canada had it, as did an Englishman in the United States, South Africa and Australia—but they had it after 1867. That is the heritage for new Members, and I maintain that the main reason we are here is to defend that liberty. Sat on the Front Bench is the Minister for Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who saw what the power of a misdirected state could do when an assault was made on the integrity of this House. When measures are brought before this House by the Executive, supposedly to protect our liberty, we should be mindful. That is where the great difficulty comes—the clash of loyalties between ““the urgency of now””, to quote an American President, and the urgency of the issues that sometimes confront us. We make much of playing across the House and there has, of course, been an aggrandisement of the state in some of the pettiest of ways. In the face of an emergency, rushed through—in less than half an hour, I believe—was the infamous section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. That happened because of the threat of war at the time. That legislation was done away with by Douglas Hurd and the then Conservative Government in 1989, but similar provisions were re-formed in the new Bill, saying that anyone, including the Crown—even the gardeners in the royal parks—who released any information had committed an offence. That was it. It created a great dampening rug over British society. It was as if knowing the number of teaspoons in the Ministry of Defence would somehow reveal to enemy forces our readiness for war, as the numbers employed by the Ministry could be guessed. That is an example of the sort of nonsense that went on, showing how difficult it was to do away with secrecy. This is where the identity cards issue comes in. We have looked at how it came about. It was in a sense a continuation of what had happened in the first world war through a national registration system. It ceased immediately at the end of the first world war, but in 1945 it did not cease. It suited the socialist Government at the time, who believed that this would somehow enable them to plan better. That was what was really behind it. That was when we saw the ““reason creep”” that we now see in the Identity Cards Act 2006 that we are about to abolish. It crept and crept, and then a perverse citizen—glory be to God for dappled things!—challenged a policeman. Of course he was rushed to court, and of course he was found guilty. He appealed, but the Lord Chief Justice is also tied by laws, the laws that we make, and the man was guilty. It was a prima facie case: he had not been prepared to show his identity card. But the uproar in public opinion created huge agitation, and the incoming Churchill Government did away with the law. So our history is important when it comes to these matters. I saw examples in the 1980s. I must speak very cautiously, however, because we have security anxieties in this country—there is the Northern Ireland situation, for instance—but we have done terrible things in terms of that central principle of the liberty of the individual. We all know about 42 days and 96 days, and the outer reaches of arresting people without their knowing the offence with which they are charged. It took the judges of our land a long time to find that that was improper, although the requirement for every citizen to know who accuses them and with what they are charged is so basic to our common law. We are, in a sense, the custodians of that common law and of that noble tradition. I am thinking not just of England but of Scotland, and the declaration of Arbroath. These islands are the centre of that liberty. The original Bill—that monstrous Bill—was introduced because we were in a panic, or rather the Government were in a panic. We have a press that heightens and dramatises every incident, and we have almost lost our character in the way in which we respond. This city was bombed—indeed, this Chamber was bombed and destroyed—in the war, and I believe that 20,000 people were killed in one bombing incident. I come from the west midlands, which includes Coventry and Birmingham, and other Members represent other industrial centres around this island that were bombed. Hundreds died—hundreds. So serious was it that the national Administration did not want the figures to be known in case they resulted in widespread panic. Those are the difficulties involved in the judgments that Governments must make, but I am no sympathiser with Governments who introduce measures for putting information on central databanks like that of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which we cannot get at. I can only think of a young man who had some difficulties, and the attempt to extradite him to the United States. What was his offence? He had accessed the national security computers at the Pentagon. That is now serious in our world—very serious—but if one individual living in London, or wherever, can access that information, who cannot access a national databank? That is what this is about. The very first principle of what I call civil liberties but what is now called human rights—secondary, tertiary and so forth—is the autonomy of the citizen, which is what that impinged on. No one doubts that the action was mandatory, and the reasons given changed frequently. Whatever new emergency arose, this was the answer to it. Michael Howard presented a Bill to deal with benefit fraud, and Peter Lilley—is he in the House of Lords, or is he still here?—did for it in the Cabinet. That is why the Conservative sense of liberty is something to be proud of. Front Benchers panic, and Back Benchers are the brake on that. The Labour party failed abysmally. I give credit to the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick)—it is true that he opposed these measures throughout—but do not doubt that Conservatives also opposed them throughout. We watched the dancing princes of new Labour as they asserted that the very life of the nation was threatened, but we are still here. The test of the life of the nation being threatened is part of the Human Rights Act, and they trampled all over that. It is not the Human Rights Act that matters. What matters is what we, a sovereign Parliament, hold to be appropriate. I see the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) sitting there. He had the most distinguished of predecessors, who is missed because he forensically and quietly argued the case for liberty. So did my friend from Grantham, Douglas Hogg. That case was argued across the House. We had right on our side. The conversion of my party to remembering and asserting those rights, freedoms and liberties is expressed in the first legislation to be brought to the House in this Parliament. I commend the Government for that. It is testament to something important that this House is on the move again.