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Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cotswold) (Con): Before the hon. Gentleman concludes, will he press the Minister on whether the figure of 5 per cent. for name changes includes divorcees? I imagine that, during a year, quite a number of divorcees will want to change their names.
Mr. Oaten: It would be helpful for the Minister to drop us a useful note about that setting out exactly what percentage of people and how many individuals it is thought will be involved in house change,
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including the impact on the figures of those individuals who change their name through marriage or who have gone through divorce process.
While I am on my feet, we want to know about the cost of having to notify debts. How will the system cope with such issues? We need a note that explains the churn plus effect. Subject to having that information on the record and to the reassurance that we have received that it is not the Government's intention to charge automatically for changes to the register, I am happy to beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 12 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Invalidity and surrender of ID cards
Mr. Malins: I beg to move amendment No. 45, in clause 13, page 11, line 14, leave out from 'State' to 'if'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 46, in clause 13, page 12, line 6, after 'who', insert 'unreasonably'.
No. 102, in clause 13, page 12, line 7, leave out paragraph (a).
Mr. Malins: We are dealing with the subject of notifying the Secretary of State about cards that have gone absent. Let us suppose that each member of the Committee puts up their hands in response to a question about whether they have ever sent their clothing to the dry cleaners with either a card or a £5 note in the pocket and have never seen it again? If that has not happened to anyone here, I would be absolutely amazed. It happens in my family the whole time.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I wish to tell my hon. Friend an interesting little story that happened to a constituent the other day. He had put £250 in cash into the pocket of his trousers. He gave the trousers to Oxfam. Perhaps it was another charity—I would not like to besmirch the name of Oxfam. Anyway, when he went back to the shop the next day to get the £250 back, they would not give it to him because they thought that it was a gift.
Mr. Malins: There we are. That is a most interesting story. I imagine that the constituent probably had to buy back the trousers.
When I first read the clause, I thought that the words ''damaged'' or ''tampered with'' were slightly different concepts for people to understand. Clause 13(1) obliges us to report to the Secretary of State if our
I might get slightly fraught with worry if I could not find my identity card on a Friday evening. I might ask myself whether I should notify the Home Secretary the following morning, or wait until Wednesday on the
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off-chance that it turns up—in the dry cleaning, for instance.
Amendment No. 45 is intended to draw from the Minister an explanation of why I have
''to notify the Secretary of State, and such other persons as may be prescribed''.
I have searched the explanatory notes for guidance on who those other persons are. Perhaps it is stated somewhere in the Bill. I am concerned at the prospect of having to notify not only the Secretary of State of the problem of my card being mislaid or lost, but a lot of other people. I do not know who those people are, and I am hoping that the Minister will tell us. That is the purpose of this probing amendment.
Amendment No. 46 addresses this reference in subsection (6):
''A person who contravenes a requirement''.
I want to insert the word ''unreasonably''. I believe that the Home Affairs Committee thought that a reasonableness defence should be included in the Bill. If that is the case, there may be an argument for including it.
There is a further brief matter that I want to address, but I would prefer it to be discussed in the clause stand part debate.
Mr. Oaten: I rise to support the points made by the hon. Gentleman on this issue, and I want to raise a further couple of points by way of amendment No. 102. They relate to the periods of time within which individuals would have to realise that they had lost an identity card.
The hon. Gentleman asked how many times people had lost a £5 note at a dry cleaners. Surely, the answer to that is that most of us do not know whether that has happened to us. There is a real issue about when people discover when they have lost something. There must have been quite a few things that I have lost but that I did not even know that I had lost. On such occasions, when it was pointed out to me that I had lost it, I could innocently have said that I had no idea. Somebody could then turn to me and say, ''Well, that is odd, because you probably lost it six months ago and you haven't used it since.'' That might make me feel slightly guilty because I had not reported losing something, even though I genuinely did not know that it was lost.
Somebody may claim that they lost their card ages ago—for example, if they suddenly realise that it must have been lost when their car was stolen eight months ago. Can the Minister assure us that any action taken would be reasonable, and that there would not be an automatic assumption that the loss had to be reported within 24 or 48 hours, or within similar parameters?
Does the Minister have any comments to make on whether an individual will be required to prove that they have lost the document, and what evidence they might be required to produce to prove that? Sometimes people have to go through quite a process to show that a document has been registered lost, or that they have told the police that it was lost, in order to prove that they are not making things up and they genuinely have lost the document. Does the Minister
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wish to tell us anything about that issue? Will individuals have to prove that they have lost this document?
The clause contains a provision that people may have to bring their old card when they seek to renew. Why is that provision included? Is it to ensure that there are no old cards in the system because people have to hand back their cards? Will it be a requirement on all occasions that people have to hand back their old card when they seek to renew a card? We are concerned that we might be being a little heavy handed with individuals who have genuinely lost their card.
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Finally, what is the definition of damage to a card? It would be helpful to understand that, because someone walking around with a card that is slightly bent or twisted might discover that when they put it through a reader to access health services—if that ends up being a use for the card—it does not work. Whose fault is it that the card was damaged? Should the person have notified someone to say that it was damaged? How on earth does one know whether it is damaged? Those are just a few issues on which we would like clarification.
Patrick Mercer: I want briefly to speak on amendment No. 45. The Bill reads:
''Regulations may require an individual to whom an ID card has been issued to notify the Secretary of State, and such other persons as may be prescribed''.
My hon. Friend the Member for Woking has already made this point, but in the case of a lost passport, the onus is on the owner to notify merely one authority. Why has the provision that I read out been included? If the Minister insists on keeping it in the Bill, would he be kind enough to tell us precisely which other authorities must be informed? As the hon. Member for Winchester points out, a list is given. The provision mentions cards that are
Some of those terms may require further definition.
Mr. Browne: The hon. Members who seek further definition have put their fingers on a reasonable point, and that is exactly why there are definitions of both phrases in subsection (8). It is reasonable to give people some point of reference on what ''damaged'' or ''tampered with'' means in relation to a card. We have put that guidance in the Bill itself, so that people will have that point of reference.
The whole idea of knowledge is written quite specifically into the provisions, although it was not in the draft Bill. That is one of the changes made as a result of the Home Affairs Committee's pre-legislative scrutiny of this Bill and others. It made the sensible recommendation that subsection (1) should apply only if someone
''knows or has reason to suspect that the card has been''
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lost, stolen, damaged, tampered with or destroyed. The change was made directly in response to the Select Committee's argument.
The Government have taken upon themselves the responsibility to provide evidence from which knowledge can be inferred. It certainly would not be helpful to set out in the Bill what
''knows or has reason to suspect''
means, because it is quite a common phrase in legislation; it has been well exercised in the courts and there are a number of definitions, but it is a function of evidence. The Government have taken it upon themselves to ensure that that is the standard that they have to meet.
It is, of course, standard practice when renewing a passport to surrender the expiring document so that it can be invalidated in some way. I do not think that it is unreasonable to require people with valuable documents to take on a responsibility to notify the issuing authority if they are lost, stolen, damaged, tampered with or destroyed, and I do not think that anyone is suggesting that it is unreasonable.
Amendment No. 45 would remove the power to require an individual to report that a card has been lost, stolen, damaged, tampered with or destroyed to anyone other than the Secretary of State. Not unreasonably, hon. Members ask why anyone beyond the Secretary of State should be informed, as the Secretary of State is the issuing authority for the identity card. The answer lies in the fact that if, under clause 4, a document is designated that would, in the normal run of events, not be issued by the Secretary of State—and that is possible; say we choose at some point to designate a driving licence—a document notification that the card has been lost, stolen et cetera would be of relevance to the issuing authority. If that were restricted only to the Secretary of State, he would, in order to ensure the integrity of the designated document scheme to which the ID card was related, have to notify the designated documents authority of the report of laws, thereby adding an extra step to the Secretary of State's processes and putting no obligation on the individual. That is not to say that there will not, in the fullness of time, be a process within government that will allow such an exchange of information to take place. It is sensible that if we are allying these documents, and the loss of one could potentially effect the integrity of another, there ought to be some obligation on the individuals to recognise that relationship. The person who the individual may notify would be subject to parliamentary approval through the regulations made under clause 13(1), so Parliament will have an opportunity to consider that.
Amendment No. 46 would add the word ''unreasonably'' to clause 13(6), so:
''A person who contravenes a requirement''
to notify loss or fails to surrender a card
''is guilty of an offence.''
Following the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee, we have already added to clause 13(1)
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wording relating to a failure to notify losses, subject to the test that the individual
''knows or has reason to suspect'',
so the issue of reason has already been written in and we do not need to deal twice with the card being lost. That is sufficient and we do not need to go further.
Similarly, the offence of failing to surrender the card applies only if the person is in possession of an ID card to which he is not entitled and fails to surrender it as soon as is practicable, or where the Secretary of State specifically requires that individual to surrender it. That is appropriate and each individual set of circumstances needs to be considered, because to try to cover every eventuality in legislation would be nonsense. We can, against that phraseology, ensure that no injustice will be done to individuals, and they will have plenty of room to explain and say that they were operating in a practical, common-sense fashion.
Amendment No. 102 would mean that we could enforce any requirement to notify loss. The hon. Member for Winchester is not seeking to ensure that the Bill proceeds on that basis—in fact, he does not want the Bill to proceed at all—but to explore why we need a means of enforcement. The requirement to notify becomes meaningless if there is no means of enforcement. It is vital that card holders are under an enforceable obligation to notify the scheme of the loss of a card, or a suspected loss, which might be just as important, so that cards can quickly be cancelled.
The hon. Gentleman asks for the reasons why we may want to enforce that obligation, and I shall give them to him. First, we would risk people choosing not to notify a loss, and any lost cards in circulation could fall into the wrong hands, whether accidentally or on purpose. All hon. Members have some concerns about that in relation to passports. A significant number of passports go missing in the hands of individuals—although thankfully far fewer of them now in the hands of the UK Passport Service—or en route to and from there, than was once the case, because of the procedures that are now in place. However, far too many passports go missing in the hands of individuals, and those generate a significant concern. There is a process whereby notification of the loss of a passport puts it on a warnings index, so if it is used at our borders it can be checked. Hon. Members who have been travelling recently will know that there is significant security as passports are checked against the warnings index.
Once the cards are out there and in the wrong hands they can be used for unauthorised purposes, including non-biometric verification, to obtain goods fraudulently and in potential attempts to circumvent card security features by tampering with them or disassembling them.
Secondly, the scheme's security and fraud management function must be aware of any serial loss of identity cards, such that it can counter the threat that that poses to the scheme's security. I am surprised how often the same individuals lose the same valuable documents. Serial loss is now, in intelligence terms, valuable information for those authorities that
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we charge with the responsibility of looking after secure documents.
Finally, if the card is damaged it may prevent an individual from using public services efficiently. We need to ensure that we can quickly reissue cards in such circumstances.
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