My Lords, I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours. He is merely putting forward, probably before his time, something that will inevitably come. The sad thing is, as we have more and more science at our disposal to improve the standard of our lives throughout the world, every now and again it is resisted. There is nothing new in that; it is always happening.
When the noble Lord was speaking, what immediately occurred to me as a good example of scientific progress that is being rejected in some areas at the moment is GM foods. There have even been examples of modern vaccinations being rejected. Clearly, DNA being the most certain of the biometrics currently available is something that will come. It is used in other countries. There is nothing sinister about it. The noble Lord’s idea of a voluntary database is extremely sensible and a very good way of moving forward.
Of course one has to recognise the cultural inhibitions and the emotional barriers to doing these things. I always felt that the problem with the identity card system that the previous Government aspired to and which the current Government have scrapped was not the identity part of it but the cards, because people saw identity cards as being echoes of fascism and totalitarianism of various sorts. In any case, the card itself is quite a dangerous thing. The great thing about biometrics is that if you want to know who someone is, you have the biometric and thus the person. If you want to check whether A is who he or she says they are, you take the biometric. You cannot compare the person with a card, because a good criminal or a good terrorist would ensure that the chip on the card matched themselves, but you can compare them with a fundamental base. This will come. Of course, as the noble Lord said, we are in a complicated society in which people move, but the global economy is nothing compared with the global society in which we will move, and as this happens we have to be able to dispose of resources efficiently to help people who need help rather than those who do not, and of course to fight crime as well. We have to have the means of knowing who people are. What the noble Lord suggests is thoroughly sensible, and as it would give the Government only the powers to do it I hope that they will look at it very carefully.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Marlesford
(Conservative)
in the House of Lords on Tuesday, 31 January 2012.
It occurred during Debate on bills on Protection of Freedoms Bill.
About this proceeding contribution
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734 c1529-30 Session
2010-12Chamber / Committee
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