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Mr. John Taylor (Solihull) (Con): I am grateful to the Minister for giving way because he was in the middle of developing his argument. Before he completely passes on from his response to the hon. Member for Vauxhall, I want him to reassure the Committee now that the exercise has nothing to do with European convergence, that it is not minded in that way and that it is not set in that form. If the Bill has merit—on which my jury is still out, by the way—it is the proper supervision of the sovereignty of the
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nation and its good and efficient governance. If it brings good order to my country, I shall continue to take an interest in it. If it is part of European convergence, I may go a different way.
The Chairman: Before the Minister replies, the remarks of the hon. Member for Vauxhall in the European context were made almost as a throwaway rather than a long-standing contribution to the debate, so I urge Members not to be tempted down the road of European convergence, which is not specific to this measure. This is a point that the Minister will want to deal with at some stage, but I would rather that he did not do so while we are debating the clause.
Mr. Browne: Thank you, Mr. Conway, for your helpful advice. I wish to respond to the intervention by saying that the hon. Gentleman can have the reassurance he seeks.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The Minister said, significantly, that it is the Government's intention to make identity cards compulsory. Is it also their intention to make it compulsory to carry identity cards?
Mr. Browne: As the hon. Gentleman should know, there is a measure that provides for the opposite by saying that it cannot be made compulsory to carry the cards. It has never been the Government's intention to make that compulsory. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam explained to some degree why that is not necessary and why we do not need to go down that route, with all the civil liberty implications of the compulsion to carry. In any event, people carry their biometrics. If people are in such a position that the police or the authorities are entitled under other legislation to establish their identity, they will have their biometrics with them and the register will allow their proper identification, if necessary.
Mr. Malins: Following on from that last point, the Minister has been frank in saying that the scheme will be compulsory. Does he not recognise the sheer logic of saying that if it is compulsory to have a card it must follow, as night follows day, that it should be compulsory to carry it and to produce it on request, or the compulsion in having a card will be utterly watered down?
Mr. Browne: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I fundamentally disagree. For the scheme to be effective, it is unnecessary to require people to carry the cards or, worse, to have to produce them on request. That would be an invasion of civil liberties and is the way to create an environment in which all the worst excesses that people attribute to the scheme, which it is deliberately designed to preclude, could creep into the society in which we live. It is unnecessary.
As I constantly repeat in these debates, if we must have a discussion on the powers that the police should have, it should be held in the context of police powers, not in the context of an ID card scheme that is designed to provide a method of giving a gold standard of identification to individuals, protecting their identity and protecting us in relation to the purposes set out in the Bill.
Mr. Curry: That refers to production on request, but the Minister said earlier that part of the purpose of
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registration is to ensure that people do not seek employment if they are not entitled to be employed. Presumably, therefore, a would-be employer is entitled to ask for evidence that somebody is employable, which will be carried on the identity card or will be registered. Equally, there is a long clause about the delivery of public services. Presumably, somebody who is delivering public services is entitled to ask whether there is proof of entitlement to them.
If I am stopped by the police and they ask to see my driving licence, I think I am right in saying that I can produce it at a police station of my choice within two weeks.
The Chairman: Order. I do not like to be a restrictive Chairman, but we are going far from the nature and definition of the clause. Perhaps hon. Members will have this discussion when we get to clause 8, and I am sure it will be in order to do so. However, we are pre-empting later debates that the Committee will want to explore.
I realise that these are important matters—I do not deny that—but they do not relate specifically to the clause, so I must insist that the Committee return to the concept of the clause. The compulsion aspects will be relevant when we get to clause 8 or another part of the Bill.
Mr. Curry: Thank you, Mr. Conway. That is most helpful.
My question is this: if people do not have to carry a document, do they have to give an assurance that they possess it? If they possess it, can they say, ''I invite someone to call next Thursday at 3.30 pm and I will show it''? That sounds absurd, but we are in a curious Catch-22 situation in which people might be required to have a document, but are not required to demonstrate that they have it, even though certain services can be obtained only if they have it. I am confused.
Mr. Browne: The purpose of this Committee is to try to reduce confusion and give explanations on behalf of the Government, which is my job as a Minister. I am happy to do that to the extent that I am able. I will endeavour to assist Committee members within the confines of the relevance of the debate. I shall quickly reply to the right hon. Gentleman's helpful remarks, as that will allow me to reiterate something that I have said in public on a number of occasions. Then I shall deal with the amendment and make some comments on the clause.
The current position is that in all the activities that the right hon. Gentleman identified, those people who provide the activities, or opportunities for employment, are required to establish the identity of the person to whom they are provided. Indeed, one Government—I think he was a Minister at the time—enacted legislation requiring employers to do just what he suggests employers will be required to under the Bill. That Government willed the way by saying that employers had to establish who people were and whether they were entitled to work, because there was
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concern about illegal working, but they did not give employers the means to do that.
The scheme will give us—due to technological developments and the coincidence of the fact that we will be collecting biometrics in relation to a substantial proportion of the population for international travel documents and passports—the opportunity to make that step towards a system for proving people's identity to a proper, secure standard. For the first time ever, there will be a gold-plated means for people to prove who they are in all relevant circumstances.
The scheme will create that opportunity and then create opportunities for those who provide public services appropriately to designate through regulation the incremental use of that scheme and of the cards in other areas. That does not seem to be so difficult. In fact, we operate on the basis that we are not giving the police extra powers, subject to one or two minor qualifications that we discussed when we last debated these issues. We are not creating extra powers for anybody; we are just creating additional opportunities. However, this scheme will regulate the exercise of existing powers through regulation. We will address that matter later.
Mr. Curry: Will a penalty be entailed in terms of not being able to access a service if I choose not to demonstrate the existence of an identity card or similar document?
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Mr. Browne: That will be a matter for consideration in the context of any future regulations that might be made on the use of cards for proof of identity in order to access services, rather than in this context.
Clause 4 is the key to the delivery of the ID card scheme because it provides a mechanism by which individuals can be brought into the scheme. An application for a designated document will, in effect, trigger an application for an ID card. The issuing procedures are set out in detail in clause 8, but the designation of a document must precede any of the procedures where the ID card is issued together with, or as part of, a designated document. A stand-alone card could be issued by the Secretary of State under clause 8 without any documents being designated.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam suggests that the advantage of proceeding in this way is that it provides a stealthy means of compulsion. That is not the case; I am absolutely open about the position in relation to compulsion. The advantage is that there are already established processes with high levels of security for issuing certain designated documents such as passports and residence permits, and those processes will form the basis of the work of the ID cards delivery agency; for passports, there will shortly be the collection of biometrics in any case. Roll-out will be incremental as people come to apply for, or renew, documents—or, in the case of foreign nationals, arrive to stay in the UK for more than three months. In that way, the problems associated with a ''big bang'' approach can be minimised. We can do a number of things. We can incrementally build the register and the database, and the confidence of the people of the UK in the system, before finally moving
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to full compulsion by a process that we will debate in due course.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: The Minister said something very important when he referred to anyone who is in the UK for over three months. Does that apply to people from all European Union countries, including southern Ireland?
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