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Mr. Browne: I do not wish to add to the time that the hon. Gentleman is taking. However, I have experience of cases in which benefit fraud has involved people saying that they live at one address when they are living at another.
Mr. Malins: This might be a debate for another day. I cannot immediately recall trying a case in which somebody claimed that. However, the Minister will accept the gist of what I am saying: most benefit fraud involves people saying that they are not working when, in truth, they are.
Will the Minister say a little about the card's ability to prevent or detect benefit fraud? Will he also say—again, in view of the time, I shall not lay out my full arguments on identity theft and the research that has been done on it—something about identity theft as well as what I would call straightforward benefit fraud?
I am drawing an hour and a half's speech to a close in minutes. I do that not because I do not feel that my amendments deserve consideration, not least on the question as to why my addresses elsewhere are needed, and for how long and in which countries. That is a great deal to ask, with many practical difficulties. The
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critical amendment is the one that asks that the Bill say that an identity card has a real purpose—to assist in the prevention or detection of terrorist acts—because that possibly is true. I hope that the Minister will be able to help us on that issue, because it is important to all of us.
Mr. Curry: I read the Bill last night, which was probably a mistake, and when I came to this part of the clause and the demand for addresses, I simply did not believe what was being asked for.
I have led a relatively uncomplicated life. I was born in Burton-on-Trent, then my family moved just north of Burton-on-Trent and then we moved to Ripon, where we stayed with my grandparents while my family looked for a house. We lived in a council house for a while and then my parents bought a house in Leeds. Meanwhile I was at Oxford and then at Harvard. I think that where I lived at Harvard has been demolished, so tracing it may be difficult. I then started work in Newcastle. At my first residence, I had a disagreement with the landlord about the decorations and I had to find a second residence there. I then moved down to Finchley, where I lived for a brief time. I finally bought a house in Essex, and, while there, was posted to Brussels and then to Paris for the Financial Times. Then we came back and bought another house in Essex, but meanwhile I had to acquire a house in Yorkshire, because I represent a Yorkshire constituency. That is a relatively uncomplicated saga. Will all that have to go down, given that I must have lived in my last house for about 20 years now?
Compared with mine, my father's story is much more complicated, because I suppose that, for part of his life, his residence was a motor cycle on the plains of Germany during the second world war. What goes down as his residence during that time? My dad is 87 and compos mentis, but if I said ''Dad, will you jot down for me a list of where you have lived and from when?'', he would go into a state of panic. He would not be able to do it. Elderly people who come to our surgeries have great difficulty recalling chronology and facts. This is a serious imposition for them.
I have a constituency with a large number of care homes. Looking after the elderly is the hidden industry in many rural parts of the United Kingdom. It is a major part-time employer in my constituency. Many elderly people in such homes will not be able to fill in the necessary forms. I am not sure that, without extensive researches, the documents would exist. How necessary is it that this incredibly detailed residential CV should be an essential part of the register? Is it necessary for elderly or retired people—say, those over the age of 75 who get a free television licence—to fill in such a CV? If people have lived over a certain period most recently at the same address, do we need to go back beyond that? It is an incredibly complicated provision that will cause many people a great deal of strain and stress. In some cases where they have lived will not be traceable; they will not have been there long enough to have been on the electoral register.
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My hon. Friend the Member for Woking mentioned people living in London. We all know about the low turnouts in London at elections, which is due to people not registering on the electoral register. There is a tremendous transient movement and, as he said, the number of people buying property every year is significantly more than one would guess when one examines the statistics. I wonder to what extent the provisions are really necessary. Can we not find some essential elements that will save most of the population the burden of going back over what may be extraordinarily complicated personal histories, which they will have genuinely great difficulty in remembering?
Patrick Mercer: I rise to address principally amendment No. 43, which deals with ID cards as opposed to the ID register. I believe that a correctly organised and researched identity register will be a powerful tool in countering terrorism, but my experiences of ID cards lead me to ask one or two questions of the Minister.
I referred earlier to the experimental use of special driving licences in Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Although it was never stated that they were identity cards, after several tours in the mid-1970s with my battalion, we returned to south Armagh in 1977 when the Sherwood Foresters were sent back. We were told that things had changed; terrorists using cars or those that had driving licences would be much more easily traced and our job as enforcers of the law and keepers of the peace would be considerably simpler as a result.
We had lengthy training, Mr. Conway, which you may have gone through yourself, about what the driving licences would mean to Tommy Atkins when he was mounting a vehicle checkpoint in the wilds of south Armagh. We honestly and truthfully believed that that would be a great asset in fighting terrorism. There is no doubt in my mind that 90 per cent. of the people that we stopped at the vehicle checkpoints were ordinary, law-abiding, decent citizens, even in that troubled part of the world. However, after a short while, it became clear to me that the soldiers and policeman under my command were using the driving licence that was being presented to them as a form of pass instead of checking carefully the photograph on the driving licence, checking that the person driving the vehicle looked like the photograph and that the address matched all the information that was being given.
I freely acknowledge that those were uncomplicated days and technology was not particularly advanced. I understand that there may be more technological solutions to those problems now, but the fact remained that in a windswept or snow-swept lane at three in the morning when a driving licence was presented to one of the soldiers, he tended to consider it as a pass to enable the driver to move through quickly. Those who were searched, given a difficult time and pulled over for further inquiries were those who were not carrying their identity cards/driving licences. That is what raises a problem with cards.
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The details are not yet clear but I am sure that the Minister will remember that, about two weeks ago, a dining mess shared by American soldiers and Iraqi policemen and militiamen just outside Baghdad was blown to pieces by a suicide bomber. It seems that that bomber showed his identity card as he passed through the sanitised zone on his way to the mess hall. It is not clear whether that bomber was carrying someone else's pass or his own. In any event, we know that he was carrying an identity card.
I understand that nothing will be absolutely watertight. Nothing that we can do with identity cards will ensure a 100 per cent. guarantee that they will help. However, I have a practical difficulty with the carrying of a card. The card, rather than being a guarantee of decency and a law-abiding nature, will turn into a free pass, either for those who wish to evade the law or those—who may be carrying a legitimate card—who wish to blow themselves to pieces in the midst of their enemies. I would be grateful if the Minister explained that. To echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking, I believe that this aspect of the Bill should reflect the amendment if we are to tie down this and other worrying elements of the legislation.
The Chairman: Before I invite the Minister and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam to wind up, we will suspend for 20 minutes. We shall resume at 4.50 pm.
4.30 pm
Sitting suspended.
4.50 pm
On resuming—
Mr. Browne: I am grateful for hon. Members' contributions to the debate. I acknowledge at the outset that addresses have raised important issues and I shall respond to some of the questions that have been asked. I am not in a position to respond to all of them, but I undertake to return to the matter before the Committee concludes its business. If I am unable to do so because there is no appropriate debate on future amendments, I will deal with it in the remaining stages in the House. Hon. Members are entitled to greater clarity of the issue than the Bill allows at present because it is enabling legislation and there are developments in the area. I shall return to the matter in Committee or in the House and explain exactly where we stand.
I shall deal with the amendments in the order in which they were grouped. The amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam are intended to make a wholesale reduction in the identity information that may be held. I do not believe that they are wrecking amendments, but later amendments that he has tabled are intended for that purpose and we shall deal with them in due course.
Under the hon. Gentleman's amendments, not only would we lose the ability to hold any information other than a contact address but information on identity numbers and residential status would also be lost. That loss may be an incidental consequence, but it would be a consequence. Residential status, which includes
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nationality or immigration status, is an important part of one's identity and if that changes, it should be recorded.
If all that was required was a contact address, we would leave it open to people to use accommodation addresses to give the false impression that they lived in a place where they did not live and that could be used as a way of gaining an advantage. For example, at one end of the spectrum, people might seem to live in the catchment area of a particular school and, at the other end of the spectrum, criminals could avoid giving their principal address on their applications. That would be a serious loophole and would drive a coach and horses through the efficacy of the register and the identity cards that will be issued from the register.
Amendments Nos. 6 and 7, tabled by the hon. Member for Newark, relate to the holding of addresses on the national identity register and their inclusion in the registrable facts defined in subsection (5). A person's address is an important fact in ascertaining their identity. The current address will generally be all that is needed when someone wishes to confirm their identity, unless they have recently moved, when most people would expect to be asked for their previous address. That is normal experience in day-to-day transactions at the moment.
To verify the true identity of someone who applies for an identity card, it may be necessary to examine their biographical footprint over a number of years. In the case of British citizens returning from abroad or foreign nationals newly arrived in the United Kingdom, that should include their previous addresses outside the United Kingdom.
The Government's intention is that the application process for an identity card will be as easy and as straightforward as possible. For most people who have lived at the same address for a reasonable period, the current address is all that will be needed. However, we must be ready to deal with bogus applications and there is no doubt that, for fraudsters trying to create an identity, it will be much more difficult to fabricate historic information. If a suspicious application is received, a check on previous addresses will be a good way of helping to verify the applicant's bona fides and whether they are who they claim to be. That is why it would dangerous to state in the Bill that we will only ever ask people for their address during, for example, the previous five years, which is the current thinking. That is the sort of period for which we expect to ask applicants for information, but we must hold in reserve the power to seek information about earlier addresses if that is necessary to confirm someone's true identity. That is the reason for the way in which the provision is drafted.
I accept that for some people, such as Travellers, homeless people or people who have an itinerant lifestyle for a short period, there will be a genuine reason why it will be difficult to provide a single permanent address. However, I am ready to give a commitment that we will find a sensible way around that to ensure that no one is disadvantaged because of such difficulties. I can do that because it currently happens with driving licences and passports. There is
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no bar to someone without a fixed abode obtaining a passport or driving licence, and in both cases they would be expected to provide a contact address so that the documents can be sent to them, but that is all. We can draw on a history of relationships with Government agencies. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam is right: the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency holds current addresses on its database, but it also holds historical addresses.
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