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Patrick Mercer: We alluded to this subject earlier. My hon. Friend has made the point extremely clearly, so I will therefore be brief in saying to the Minister that I see no point in having the card if an officer of the law or an officer of the security forces cannot demand that it be produced in exactly the same way that a driving licence has to be produced.
I will be amazed, fascinated and very grateful if the Minister can explain the point of the measure to me. The card will cost the individual dear. It is designed to counter all sorts of ills, not least terrorism, yet we are saying that while there is a compulsion to own the card, there is no compulsion either to carry it or to produce it at a police station or a similar establishment. It seems to me to negate completely the point of having a card—particularly the point of compulsorily owning a card—if it cannot be demanded by an officer of the law or his equivalent.
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Mr. Curry: I seek clarification on the following point. The subsection that my hon. Friend the Member for Woking seeks to delete states:
''Nothing in this section authorises the making of regulations the effect of which would be to require an individual—
(a) to carry an ID card with him at all times''.
However, in Prime Minister's Question Time on 1 December, the Prime Minister said:
''We think that it is legitimate and right, in this day and age, to ask people to carry identity cards, and that is why we will proceed with it.''—[Official Report, 1 December 2004, Vol. 428, c. 627.]
That is at odds with what is in the Bill. I ask the Minister to explain whom one has to take notice of. Will what the Prime Minister says be introduced later, or is he not wholly familiar with the Bill?
Mr. Browne: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister can speak for himself, and he often does, so there are opportunities for hon. Members to question him on such issues. I was present when he gave that answer; the Bill was already published, and the provision was in place, and the Prime Minister might have—[Interruption.] Yes, he may well have inadvertently used the same phraseology that a lot of other people use in relation to identity cards.
However, in our discussions of the Bill, we need to be far more precise, and I cannot be any more precise than I have been. I said on Second Reading and I have already said in Committee that we do not intend to require anybody to carry a card at all times, and we will not give any new powers to the police to check identity.
Patrick Mercer: What is the point, then?
Mr. Browne: I will come on to that in a moment. I have already tried to explain it, so it is clearly a failing on my part that hon. Members are unable to understand. I will try to explain it again, and to do so as simply as possible.
I thought I made it clear on Second Reading that if there is an argument—I do not think that there is—
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that we should live in a society in which people can be stopped at random and required to prove their identity, or even that they should be required to do so if some people have suspicions about them, we must have a debate on that in a context in which it is relevant to consider police powers. If we get to a position in the UK where we need to move to checking people's identities in that way—God forbid that we do—we will need to discuss whether increased police powers are justified by the environment in which we live and the problems and challenges that we face, and then we can decide whether we want to give the police those powers.
It is clear to me that we have already made decisions about when the police should be entitled to require people to prove who they are. They do that by taking DNA samples in certain circumstances, or by taking fingerprints. Those powers are given to the police in the context of the mischiefs being legislated for and debated in this House. In developing an identity card scheme, it is inappropriate to create a series of powers that are more properly debated in the context of prevention of terrorism, and I have no intention of allowing the Bill to be used for that purpose.
The purpose of the Bill is to provide the police with the opportunity to prove with certainty the identity of someone against the information on the register when they already have the power to do that, subject to one minor qualification: that the scenes of crime match can be compared with fingerprints in the register if there is no match from the police's national system of fingerprints. That would not be a consequence of an interaction between individuals and it certainly would not be a consequence of police powers over individuals when dealing with them. That is not that difficult to understand nor is it inappropriate.
I do not accept that the provision will make no contribution towards the interdiction of terrorism or terrorist-related behaviour because the police cannot stop people in the street and ask them to produce their identity card and, if they do not have it with them, ask them to produce it at a police station later on. I frankly do not consider that the analogy in relation to driving licences is true. Driving licences cannot be demanded willy-nilly by the police. They can be demanded by the police only in certain circumstances under road traffic legislation. There are good reasons for that: to drive a motor vehicle, obviously a person must qualify for a driving licence and be permitted to have a driving licence. Having the driving licence is a condition precedent on whether the person is insured to drive the motor vehicle, which has significant consequences for other road users. As I said, the analogy of driving licences is not a true one. I do not accept that such action needs to be carried out to make the provision effective and I shall resist amendments that would change the Bill in such a way.
Patrick Mercer: I wish to clarify what the Minister said earlier when he referred to a change in circumstances. Let us assume that something like the Madrid bombing had occurred in this country and that the whole climate in which our police and security forces have to operate changed overnight as, indeed,
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did the political climate. Does the hon. Gentleman foresee circumstances when, with the cards in place, legislation can be rushed through quickly by which they can be demanded by officers of the law?
Mr. Browne: One should be aware of Greeks bearing gifts. The hon. Gentleman is tempting me down a path that I do not want to go down. We are where we are. Security services have certain powers. We have debated them and, as Parliament, we are responsible for the fact that police have those powers. We have legislated for them. We have decided what sort of country we want to live in and what police powers we want. We are now giving the police the opportunity, when exercising those powers, to have access to certainty about the proof of people's identity. I am talking about identity, not police powers.
I repeat that, for good, sensible reasons, we said that, if the police have fingerprints from a scene of an existing crime but they cannot match them with their fingerprint database, they ought to have access to the biometric database and the identity register that will be available to identify who may or who may not be the perpetrator of the crime, or who was present at the scene of the crime. That seems perfectly sensible.
Mr. Oaten: The Minister reassures us of his determination not to extend the powers. I note that he has said that several times. However, when powers exist under terrorism legislation for the police to stop individuals and identify them, does the hon. Gentleman consider it logical that the ID card could be a way in which to establish identity?
Mr. Browne: What is logical and what we are legislating for is that the police should have access to the means by which they can verify the identity of someone when they cannot do so from their databases—if they have the powers to do so, in any event, but not if they do not have such powers. I frankly do not understand the argument that the scheme is pointless unless we bring in that additional police power.
I do not want to live in a society in which the police can stop people willy-nilly and ask them to prove who they are. Such an environment will be subject to the worst part of the way in which identity card schemes have been abused in some other countries. It would drive us into relationships between individuals and the police that we have gone to significant lengths to move away from, especially in areas with a high number of ethnic minorities. We must protect ourselves from that. The scheme is not about police powers, but the standard of proof of identity. I cannot make that any clearer and I would defend the scheme against any suggestions that it should be extended beyond that.
I will deal quickly with the other amendments. Amendment No. 133 would mean that regulations under clause 15 could not require British citizens to produce an identity card before accessing public services until universal compulsion had been introduced, even if a requirement to register were first introduced, for example, for people in a particular age group.
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The proposal in amendments Nos. 134 and 135 would mean that British citizens could not be required to produce a card or to consent to a check on the register until all British citizens were required to register. That would apply even if the conditions in clause 18(2) were met: where the requirement was imposed under clause 15, where a reasonable alternative was permitted, or where the person concerned was subject to compulsory registration under clause 6. If the proposal were accepted, it would be unlawful for anyone to require an identity card as one means of identification before offering a service to British citizens.
There may be some circumstances in which we would wish to make regulations under clause 15 for public services that are not provided free of charge, one such example being the issue of a firearms certificate. That would affect any British citizen who applied for a certificate, as well as any non-British citizen who was in the same position, before they were required to register under clause 6. That would bring the issue of a certificate under the exemption in clause 18(2)(a) to the general principle that cards cannot be required before compulsion applies to any particular category.
It would not be of any assistance to the Committee for me to go any further in relation to these matters, as the hon. Member for Woking has not dealt with any other issues. If he thinks that I should, he should intervene at this stage. If he thinks that I should not, I ask him to withdraw the amendment.
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