Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 331)
TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2004
MR MARTIN
HALL, COUNCILLOR
GERALD VERNON-JACKSON
AND MRS
JAN BERRY
Q320 Janet Anderson: Everyone has
to live somewhere, do they not?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Yes,
but we do not have to—. If people live in a house which
somebody else is paying for—for instance, take the example
of people who are working illegally, or whatever, coming into
the country illegally, working illegally, so not paying any taxes,
working for somebody who is paying them in cash, who may also
provide the accommodation and the transport to get to their work—where
do these people ever come into contact with official organs of
the state?
Q321 David Winnick: I believe that
is what happened in Morecambe.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Exactly.
That is my point exactly.
Q322 Chairman: But is not the point
at the moment that, of course, people who are not here legally
who are working in that way will not get, and should not have,
ID cards because we are not proposing to issue ID cards, or the
Government is not, to illegal immigrants. Is not the point that
at the moment many employers would say it is too easy for them
to have forged documents and, therefore, they cannot be held liable
for the fact they are employing illegal immigrants? If somebody
goes for access to a GP amongst those people, they will not need
to establish their identity. So does not the argument come from
the other point of view that, indeed, an ID card in principle
could enable you precisely to establish that people did not have
a right to be here or did not have a right to be working or to
use public services?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: One
of the points I would take up is the access to healthcare. One
of the issues that we have done a little thinking about is that
some people's health affects other people's health. Do we really
want to be denying access to healthcare to people who may not
be here legally but who, for instance, have TB. TB is highly communicable.
We have an outbreak in Portsmouth at the moment. Actually we want
people with TB to go to the doctor to be able to get treatment,
irrespective of whether they are here legally or not, simply because
they have an effect on the rest of the community.
Q323 Chairman: That is at the discretion
of—. Nobody has ever suggested that somebody who is ill
gets turned away in those circumstances.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: But
do you create fear that people will be?
Q324 Chairman: I think what we are
agreeing on is that there are a set of people who, in a sense,
will not ever have ID cards; but that may actually be a positive
thing in certain circumstances?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Possibly,
in some circumstances.
Janet Anderson: Thank you.
Q325 Chairman: Can I ask two other
questions before we end. One is about—this is for Mr Hall
and for Mrs Berry—whether there would be in the future any
significance in how often the central database was accessed. We
have read recently about people being refused mortgages because,
by trying to find out whether they could get a mortgage on-line,
they have triggered several credit applications, and they are
deemed to have made too many credit applications in a day and
get refused all credit. We are familiar in police investigations
with mobile phone records or cash-point withdrawals being accessed.
Would we come to a point in the future where it is quite important
to know, or quite significant to know, how often somebody has
had their identity checked?
Mr Hall: I cannot see why it should
be different from now. I mean, I think that depends on what the
perceived significance is of frequent footfalls; and the industry
is always seeking to find out more clearly the difference between
someone who is simply shopping around, as it were, and someone
who is serially going round a series of shops and trying to get
credit fraudulently, because there is a close correlation between
very frequent footfalls and fraud. I cannot see why any of that
should change, because the source of the identity is a different
database. I do not see it affecting eligibility for credit or
the way in which a multiple—
Q326 Chairman: You would not foresee
the credit checking agencies wanting to know if a particular individual
had had their identity checked by a lot of other people?
Mr Hall: For some other reason.
No, I cannot see that. No, I cannot.
Mrs Berry: I suspect there would
need to be some form of trigger points, particularly with regard
to the problems that we were making earlier as far as stop-and-search
is concerned. At the moment we are going to be expecting supervisors
to review the number of stops that their officers are conducting
without any real means of doing that, and I see the need for technology
to assist this to be more reliable, but you would have to put
the parameters of the system what those trigger-points would mean.
In the same way, if I go on a stopping spree at the moment and
if I use my credit card more than five times, it is not unusual
for a 'phone call to be made to my home to question where I am
and to tell my husband that I am using the card—which has
its problems—which in one sense is quite reassuring, but
in another sense is not quite so reassuring. I think those trigger
points are already there and I think, in some respects, that is
extremely comforting to us.
Q327 Chairman: Like Mr Winnick, I
do not want to put words into the mouths of witnesses, but if
I try to summarise what I think we have been here saying this
afternoon, please pull me up if I am wrong. Each of you, albeit
with varying degrees of enthusiasm, support in principle the idea
of an identity card, but it sounds to me as though each of you,
to really make the best of it, would like some significant variation
on what the Government may currently be proposing. In Mr Halls'
case an unambiguous statement, that we have not yet had, that
private sector organisations could have access to the database.
In Mrs Berry's case to make the card compulsory and, indeed, to
make it compulsory to be carried in the future, backed up with
readers which have not yet been promised. I think in Mr Vernon-Jackson's
case, possibly, the ability to add to any national card a lot
of local information for local services. Is that a fair summary?
I do not want to get anybody wrong.
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
the opposition is that we are happy with the identifier number;
we are not happy with the compulsory card; and if you have got
three billion to spend on this, I think we could find other ways
of spending it: social services and housing.
Q328 Chairman: I wanted to go on
to from there. Given that, in a sense, no-one has been promised
by the Government the package that individually you are after,
is it still worth going ahead with the set of proposals that the
Government has actually put on the table rather than the ones
that perhaps you have sketched out this afternoon? I think you
were halfway through your answer to that, Mr Vernon-Jackson, so
I do not know if you want to pick that up?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: If
you have three billion that government are choosing to spend on
this, I think changing people's lives and making people's lives
better, actually investing into social services for care for the
elderly and building social housing so that people have decent
homes for families, would make a bigger impact and a more positive
impact on people's lives. That is a discussion within government,
but I think we would remain uncertain about the benefits of—are
worried about the benefits of a card that is compulsory.
Mrs Berry: We believe we are on
a road here and we are at the beginning of that road. I do not
believe that even if we do not get compulsory carrying in the
near future—we all need to prove our identity in a number
of different ways at the moment. The way that we can prove identity
at the moment is not very satisfactory. Anything has to be better
than the current. Whilst it may be voluntary in the first instance,
our current means of proving who we are is unsatisfactory: so
anything that has some credibility with bio-metrics, has some
reliability and is robust has to be better than the system that
we have at the moment.
Mr Hall: We have seen the question
of who has access to it as still within the realms of negotiation
and consultation. There is quite a bit of fairly speculative arithmetic
in the consultative documents about the credit link specifically;
so we would naturally hope there would be seen to be mutual benefit
between access by credit reference agencies and their contributions
to the formation and accuracy of the database.
Chairman: Thank you. Members, do you
have anything more?
Q329 David Winnick: Of the three
witnesses, Mr Vernon-Jackson first. If the whole idea was dropped,
if Mr Blunkett changes his mind or there is a new Home Secretary
with different ideas, your association would not be in tears?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: I think
we see real benefits in a single identifier number that manages
to pull different bits of Central Government together that do
not appear to speak to each other. So I think that would be quite
good in terms of joined up government, but in terms of the cards,
our view is that we do not support a scheme where it is compulsory
for people to have one and have real worries that it becomes one
that is compulsory for some sections to continually carry.
Q330 David Winnick: You mentioned
that if there are billions of pounds that could be spent on improving
the lives of people, without putting words into your mouth?
Councillor Vernon-Jackson: Absolutely,
and I would be happy with those words.
Q331 David Winnick: If we leave Mrs
Berry as the most enthusiastic—unless she wants to go further—would
I be right, without putting words into your mouth, Mr Hall, that
your enthusiasm is not quite on the level of Mrs Berry's?
Mr Hall: You would be right, yes,
but I would not want you to put so many words into my mouth that
we were not seen to be strongly supportive of the scheme.
Chairman: Can I thank all three of you.
You have been admirably concise in your answers. We have covered
a huge amount of ground. Thank you very much indeed.
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