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Mr. Browne: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Spanish have nothing like as good an identity register as that which we propose, and nothing like as secure a way of proving the identity of individuals. It seems pretty obvious—I have no doubt that I could find many examples—that if the police or security services had information about, for example, the laundering of money that they suspected might be associated with or supportive of terrorist activity, they could check the identity register in such a serious criminal investigation against the identity of the person who opened or operated the relevant bank accounts.
The register could be checked to ascertain whether a suspect was registered. If they were not registered, the police could investigate how they came to have a bank account. If they were registered, they could find out where they were registered to be living. That would provide the security services with a significant amount of information in any number of circumstances. The police might find paraphernalia that they believed was normally associated with terrorism and might be able to pick up a fingerprint. By reference to the register, they would be able to ascertain who a certain person was—if they were registered in this country.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones (Cardiff, Central) (Lab/Co-op): A moment ago, the Minister made a statement about the role of identity cards in helping the Spanish authorities arrest suspects. The part that I caught was that that information has not been shared. Will the Minister clarify that? I would have imagined that information on al-Qaeda suspects was shared, although for very good reasons not in open Committee. I hope that the Spanish authorities are co-operating with the British authorities on al-Qaeda suspects.
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The Chairman: Order. I hope that the Minister will not be tempted down an unwise route. The clause is about the register.
Mr. Browne: No, but I should clarify that. My recollection of the incident that followed the Madrid bombings was that there was an explosion in which people were killed. I do not know the details of the circumstances, but I understand that the Spanish security forces had cornered or surrounded people. That is all in the public domain. I am merely saying, in the context of the Spanish police investigation, that as a Minister with my responsibilities I am not privy to what role, if any, identity cards or an identity register played in the decisions of the police that led to that incident. I would not expect such information to be in the public domain at this stage, in any case. Hon. Members should await the analysis of the investigation and the publication of the information to make any decision as to whether identity cards had any direct role in the investigations of the Madrid bombings. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to clarify that point.
Mr. Allan: I agree with the Minister, in that the arguments on both sides of the Spanish ID card debate are facile. The reality is that both terrorists and police adapt to the prevailing environment. The Minister is trying to make a powerful case for the fact that ID cards will create a more hostile environment for terrorists. We agree with the need for that more hostile environment, but the debate is about whether the price that we pay to achieve it is appropriate and whether the Bill is the best way to achieve the objective, which we all share, of defeating terrorism.
Mr. Browne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has a talent for expressing in a comparatively short intervention the issues that we need to debate. I was invited to debate the matter. I remind the hon. Member for Woking that I entered this area in response to direct questions that he asked of me.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam is absolutely right. There may well be a division in the House. It is appropriate that we should clarify the differences among Government, official Opposition and Liberal Democrat Members as to whether defeating terrorism, among other things, is a justifiable reason for the measure, given the environment in which we live.
I am unequivocal about this: if we could stop the sort of atrocity that happened in Madrid by introducing these provisions, it would be a small price to pay. I do not want to have to make ridiculous arguments. Let us ask the people who lost loved ones in Madrid whether they think that a secure identity database would have helped stop the sort of activity that happened there, and whether they would have been prepared to give up whatever bit of liberty they would have had to give up. I do not think that that is a big price to pay, particularly as we are trying to collect information that relates only to people's identity. Apart from the connection to biometric data, such information about individuals is already known by agencies of the Government, albeit perhaps for more
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limited purposes. Given the situation that we face, it is no longer sustainable to argue that somehow this is a fundamental change in the relationship, and that we are giving up massive liberties in order to secure very little. In fact, we are not giving up that much, yet the potential benefits are enormous. The benefits are potentially enormous not only in respect of terrorism—I am not arguing that the Bill will stop all terrorism—but in respect of all the purposes that are set out in clause 1. I shall quickly deal with them.
The amendment would include a reference to the prevention of terrorism. That is not a fundamental issue; I simply argue that the amendment is unnecessary. Terrorist acts are crimes, pure and simple. The Bill already provides, through the reference to the prevention and detection of crime, for the scheme to be used in combating terrorism. Combating terrorism is also covered by the references in subsection (4)(a) to national security, so the amendment is unnecessary.
I am not in the business of legislating if it is unnecessary to do so. If it would give some comfort to those who feel that it would be much easier to support the legislation if they saw the word ''terrorism'' in it, I am prepared to reflect on that, although I am not guaranteeing that I will come back with an amendment to include it. I will go and think about it, but inclusion of such words is completely and utterly unnecessary. I do not think that we should be putting in unnecessary words just because they give us some degree of comfort.
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The second effect of the amendment—by changing the reference from ''crime'' to ''serious crime''—would be to limit the usefulness to the police of the national identity register and the ID card scheme. The hon. Member for Woking made a big issue of this, defining serious crime as any indictable offence. I do not believe that it would be right to limit the use of the scheme in this manner. I will explain why.
The law already allows the police to take the fingerprints and a DNA sample from somebody who has been arrested for a recordable offence. Those circumstances will be widened if Parliament agrees to the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill and the extension of the definition of arrestable offence. It seems a simple enough question. Why should the police not be able to use the national identity register to check the identity of those arrested? They are already able to use their own database and DNA samples to check the identity of those arrested. Why should they not be allowed to do that, for example, by checking the biometric data?
We are talking about identity information, so the police could be provided from the register only with information for identity searches—name and address, date of birth and nationality. It would be very odd if, in order to seek the provision of such basic identity information, the police were to have their hands tied by only being able to make checks of those suspected of offences that would be triable on indictment.
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Mr. Malins: I understand the Minister's argument well. He is making it properly. That is the nature of a Committee. I put a point forward; he responds to me and responds properly. The definition is just a fraction wider, because crime includes a whole lot of trivial matters. Although the Minister may tell me that they would never be deemed relevant, nevertheless, crime is crime, and many offences where the police can do nothing like take fingerprints or arrest are still crimes, even if at a very low level.
Mr. Browne: I do not wish to repeat myself, but we need to look at purposes and then powers. If one looks at the powers in the Bill, one sees that the powers only allow the police to do what they already have the power to do. That is the test. We in this Parliament, and other legislation, decide whether the police have the power to arrest. Once we cross that threshold, we give the police the power to check people's identity anyway. All we are doing in this Bill is allowing them to do that via the register.
The third point is that the amendment would limit the public interest on terrorism and crime to assisting the Secretary of State to combat them. I will not make a big issue of what I suspect might be an accidental inclusion. Of course, the Secretary of State has an important role to play in these matters, but the primary responsibility for fighting crime and terrorism lies with the security services. It would be artificial and unhelpful to limit the definition to information of assistance to the Secretary of State.
The fourth point is the change to the reference to immigration and the deletion of the reference to the enforcement of prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment. I accept that, as a result of this change, the use of the scheme to combat illegal working in breach of immigration controls would still be covered. However, I ask whether all employers would realise that.
Furthermore, it would be wrong to limit artificially the use of the ID card scheme—that is, the register—to illegal working in an immigration context. Should it not be open for employers to ask to see the ID cards of all prospective employees and to be able to check identity—for example, as a way of combating under-age working or identifying employees to ensure correct accounting for tax and national insurance? We all know the difficulties that historically there have been over the number of national insurance numbers in this country. Governments of both parties have been plagued by that difficulty, because of the growth in the national insurance database. There are more national insurance numbers out there than there are people who should have them. That use generates an opportunity for us progressively to bring some of these problems to book. I do not think that it would be helpful at all to make that change.
I am asked what exact assistance this ID card register and the scheme are to dealing with illegal working. The fact is that the scheme will make it much easier for employers to check a prospective employee's entitlement to work, and that is what bedevils the prosecution of employers for illegal working. It is a problem that the previous Government sought to
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address in 1996, and legislated for in a way that was ineffective. It is a problem that we have sought to correct, with the support of the Opposition in changing those rules. I am still not satisfied that it is the best that we can do. The ID card scheme gives us an opportunity to nail down the very point that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam raises. I will come to his criticism of the status quo in a moment.
A person is entitled to be cleared in the face of the card if the holder is a British citizen and an EU national. For foreign nationals, such as students, the register will facilitate a quick and easy check on whether the person has the right to work—perhaps online or by telephone. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam says that this is all smoke and mirrors that the real problem is that there is no enforcement. He is wrong. There has been an exponential increase in the number of operations against illegal working over the last 12 months. I think we are now in excess of 770 for this year—last year.
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