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John Robertson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. If I have misled the Committee with my remarks, I withdraw them. However, I can only give the impression that I have formed from sitting at the back of the Room and listening to the deliberations.
I say to the hon. Member for Cotswold, who again is not in his place, that it is important to discuss the later clauses as very important points may need to be raised. That does not mean that I am going to mention what I will say later on; I will not. However, we have deliberated on some clauses not at length, but ad nauseam. We have stretched them out for as long as possible and stretched them out twice again. Opposition Members have made some good points, but they were lost because they were made at abnormal length.
Mr. Martin Salter (Reading, West) (Lab): I may not have heard my hon. Friend correctly. Is he informing the Committee that the hon. Member for Cotswold is a member of another Committee? If that is the case, does my hon. Friend not agree that it ill behoves the Opposition to claim that the Government are not giving them time properly to scrutinise this legislation? One of their number is dividing his time between two Committees.
John Robertson: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I accept what he says. I have said enough about the hon. Member for Cotswold. I leave it to those in the Committee, and those who read Hansard, to decide whether he has given the Committee his undivided attention. This Bill is very important to me and to the people I represent, and I think it is important that we discuss it in a proper—and, perhaps, occasionally frank—manner. I just wanted that put on the record.
11.15 am
Mr. Curry: When I was first elected to the House, my party was in government. The bane of almost every single Member of Parliament was the Member for Keighley, Bob Cryer, who used to keep us up night after night talking on money resolutions and anything that he could. Bob Cryer was a great parliamentarian. He drove us round the bend, but he was doing his job. He was exploiting the procedure to hold the
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Government to account, to make them impatient and to make Government Members tired and fed up. That was the job that he was there to do, and he did it brilliantly.
Mr. Mole: Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that the official Opposition have been exploiting the procedures?
Mr. Curry: If an Opposition cannot exploit the procedures, they should not be here.
I have had the experience of going from anonymity to becoming an elder statesman with no intermediate phase, and I spent many years doing the job that the Minister is doing. I took a number of complex Bills through the House, in particular the one that became the Housing Act 1996, which was infinitely bigger Bill than this Bill. Not a single measure was guillotined or involved knives. The usual channels and the Labour Opposition did a deal. Consideration of the Bill lasted for months and on Report we were 20 minutes behind schedule.
The Minister talked about good will. The great destroyer of good will in the House is the Government's practice of timetabling every single measure. That is not necessary; the Government will get their legislation. I took my legislation through with a Government majority of two. The Minister has a majority behind him that is bigger than the official Opposition at full strength. It is not necessary to do things in such a way.
If Opposition Members feel that we are being railroaded and are unable to give adequate scrutiny, it is because of that breach of the fundamental complicity between Members on both sides of the House that the timetabling of all legislation necessarily entails. That is why, when legislation goes to the other House, the Government experience more difficulty. The other House is substituting itself, in a sense, in the role that we are no longer permitted to play. That is an essential point.
My second point is that the Minister said that the Bill has wide public support. The fact that a measure has wide public support does not relieve the House of its requirement to scrutinise. If I introduced a Bill to restore capital punishment, which I have consistently voted against, I have no doubt that it would have wide public support. However, I would not stand up and say that because the opinion polls tell me that 77 per cent. of the population believe in capital punishment, preferably in public, we should not scrutinise the legislation. I would expect people to accept that the job of the House is to scrutinise.
The argument has come from those on the Labour Benches—on Second Reading in particular—that because there is wide public support for the Bill, opposition is irrelevant or irresponsible. We must resist that, because otherwise we would not be doing our job. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold says that he will get the Bill out of Committee by common agreement, he will do so. I was driven mad when I did the Minister's job, because I
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thought that we would never get the wretched legislation out. However, my hon. Friend's equivalent was as good as his word and we got the Bill out.
So, we can work together, but the Minister should pass the message back that things always get off to a bad start if the Government begin on the assumption that what I have described as a complicity across the House cannot be called into being. That means that we are driven to want to exploit the procedures, just as Bob Cryer exploited them. We are doing the job that we are paid to do.
Patrick Mercer: We have several times heard that the Bill is popular with the public. We have been told—
Mr. Clifton-Brown: On a point of order, Mr. Conway. I apologise to my hon. Friend for interrupting him. We are about to vote on this motion, and the Government will no doubt use their majority to succeed. If they succeed, you will have to put the question. That will mean that important clauses entitled ''Renewal of ID cards for those compulsorily registered'', ''Functions of persons issuing designated documents'' and ''Power to require information for validating Register''—vital clauses—will be completely undebated by the Committee. That is the consequence of what the Government are doing. It brings Parliament into disrepute.
The Chairman: Sadly, that is not a point of order for the Chair, although the observation is entirely accurate and I will put the question. In fact, I must interrupt Mr. Mercer, who had the Floor.
It being half an hour after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, The Chairman put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order 83C(9).
The Committee divided: Ayes 10, Noes 5.
Division No. 6]
AYES
Browne, Mr. Desmond
Jones, Mr. Jon Owen
Mole, Chris
Mountford, Kali
Prosser, Mr. Gwyn
Robertson, John
Russell, Christine
Ryan, Joan
Salter, Mr. Martin
Tynan, Mr. Bill
NOES
Clifton-Brown, Mr. Geoffrey
Curry, Mr. David
Malins, Mr. Humfrey
Mercer, Patrick
Taylor, Mr. John
Question accordingly agreed to.
Ordered,
Amendment proposed: No. 43, in clause 8, page 7, line 7, at end insert
(c) is issued for the following purposes only—
(i) to assist in preventing or detecting terrorist acts in the United Kingdom or elsewhere or otherwise in the interests of national security;
(ii) to assist the Secretary of State in preventing or detecting serious crime;
(iii) the purposes of controlling illegal immigration and enforcing immigration controls;
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(iv) the purpose of securing proper provision of the following public services, namely—
(d) social security benefits.
(1A) In subsection (1)(c)(ii), ''serious crime'' has the same meaning as in section 1(1A).'.—[Mr. Malins.]
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 6, Noes 10.
Division No. 7]
AYES
Clifton-Brown, Mr. Geoffrey
Curry, Mr. David
Malins, Mr. Humfrey
Mercer, Patrick
Oaten, Mr. Mark
Taylor, Mr. John
NOES
Browne, Mr. Desmond
Jones, Mr. Jon Owen
Mole, Chris
Mountford, Kali
Prosser, Mr. Gwyn
Robertson, John
Russell, Christine
Ryan, Joan
Salter, Mr. Martin
Tynan, Mr. Bill
Question accordingly negatived.
Mr. Oaten: I beg to move amendment No. 88, in clause 8, page 7, line 9, after 'recording', insert 'prescribed'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 89, in clause 8, page 7, line 11, after 'carrying', insert 'prescribed'.
Mr. Oaten: I will probably not be able to do much more than welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Conway, other than to say that this amendment is probing. We want clarification from the Minister. Clause 8 refers several times to registrable facts. Are they the same as those in clause 1(5)?
Mr. Browne: I shall be brief. Frankly, I do not see the need for either amendment. The first asks for a card to record ''prescribed'' registrable facts about an individual, but subsection (3)(a) says that a card
''must record only the prescribed information'',
so it is difficult to see what the amendment would add.
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The second amendment would restrict the information to be provided when checks are made against the register. I suggest that there is no need for that amendment either. The same subsection covers the issue by referring to the ''prescribed part'' of the register, which may be accessed to verify identity. The issue is also dealt with in clause 14(2), which provides that only certain information falling within schedule 1 can be provided when checks are made.
I should add that clause 8(2)(b) involves only the carrying of data that enable the card to be used for applications for information—for example, a personal identification number. It is not about what information held in the register may be provided to third parties. That is dealt with in later clauses. I therefore invite the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.
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