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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I can see exactly what the Minister is trying to do. His final remark was that he thought that hon. Members would want this power. Immediately, something set my mind thinking. What if we were faced with the opposite situation, where a foreign Government were withholding information so that we could not prosecute someone who had committed a crime in this country? I am not sure that we would be happy about that. I am a little worried about the power. There is clearly a difficulty of the jurisdiction and where the prosecution takes place, but this is an important matter about which we must think carefully. Perhaps the Minister will give it further thought.
Mr. Browne: I always listen with care to the hon. Gentleman's contributions and I will of course give it further thought. The clause is entitled to facilitate the disclosure of information in a context that Parliament has already legislated for in the 2001 Act. It is entirely appropriate that the Bill should be consistent with the qualifications in that Act. It would be inappropriate to have inconsistent legislation. The whole purpose of subsection (3) is to mirror properly in the Bill the restriction in the 2001 Act. I can think of many reasons why we, as a sovereign Government, would want to be able to exercise that power. I can also think of many reasons why other Governments would not want us to; but that, of course, would be a matter for relationships and discussions between Governments, and it is quite right that it should be. It would be entirely inappropriate if the Secretary of State was required to give such information in those circumstances.
Consequently, it is right that the Bill contains provisions to ensure that it is consistent with the 2001 Act. That is a clear explanation of what we are doing. I invite the Committee to reject the amendment. In fact, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw it.
Mr. Clifton-Brown: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Allan: This is an important clause in terms of how it relates to clause 19, the clause on which we ended our discussions on Tuesday evening. It is important, under this part of the Bill, to test the Government's intentions in respect of paragraph 9, schedule 1 information; in ordinary English, that is the provision dealing with the personal or audit trail, showing all the times that the identity register has been checked. That is potentially the most personal data held in the system, allowing people to track a person's movements and the kind of interactions that they have had.
We have to remember that the audit trail may include lots of interactions with public services, border control interactions and any interaction with the police or law enforcement agencies. Under the provisions that allow the identity register to be used by commercial entities, the audit trail may also include things such as registering for a new mobile phone contract and opening a new bank account. All that information will, I assume, be stored as audit records under paragraph 9 of schedule 1.
This is what I am seeking to tease out from the Minister: clause 20, as it interacts with clause 19, seems to suggest that there will be hierarchies of suspicion that allow paragraph 9 of schedule 1—the audit trail information—to be disclosed. The clause seems to put in a serious crime threshold for certain bodies, and we sought to debate that under clause 19.
Mr. John Taylor (Solihull) (Con): I endeavoured to regale the Committee with my recent experience of buying a new motor car. I had to produce a passport; I think that that may have had something to do with money laundering. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would care to say, in his excellent review of the situations covered, whether my experience is instructive.
Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. In our earlier debates, we discussed the issue of money laundering regulations. They may be the Trojan horse that effectively introduces compulsion into the carrying and use of an identity card, because anti-money laundering legislation will have a cascade effect. It will mean saying to organisations, ''If you want to be sure that you are complying and that you will not be prosecuted, you must perform certain checks'' but, in a sense, the only acceptable form of check would be the identity card. If that becomes the case, and the identity card comes to be in regular use for all kinds of routine financial transactions, the audit trail will effectively include a record of the fact that a person carried out a financial transaction with a particular body on a particular date. That is potentially very intrusive.
Mr. Taylor: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me yet again. To pick up on remarks made in an earlier sitting by my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold, does that not show that the use of the identity card will not be driven merely by its necessity for accessing public services, but will be further driven—to an extent as yet unknown—by its
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necessity in engaging in private contracts in the private sector?
9.30 am
Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman puts his point effectively. We can assume that those data will be available.
I would like to clarify my reading of clause 20—subsection (4) in particular—with the Minister. He has already put his case for why the security services, which are those bodies set out in clause 19(2) and might be called the spook element, should have comprehensive access to data. He describes their comprehensive statutory functions and the fact that they will have access to the audit trail data and everything in the register at all times for the broad range of purposes that have been set out.
Those who will have access to the broad identity data in all circumstances are listed in subsections (3), (4) and (5). They are the Departments or the money people—whatever they are going to be called after the merging and reorganising of Customs and Excise and the Inland Revenue—and chief officers of police. We now know that that will include some of the Channel Islands as well, although the Alderney question is hanging over us. I do not know if that has been answered.
Those people will have access to the generality of the identity data under all circumstances, but my reading of clause 20(4) is that they will have access to the audit trail data only if they are investigating serious crime. I am trying to understand how that restriction will work in practice. It seems curious that we have this wording in clause 20(4), but clause 19 (3), which is about the police, and subsections (4) and (5), which are about Customs and Excise and the money people, all have similar wording excluding paragraph 9 of schedule 1. Can the Minister clarify whether his intention is for the two clauses to interact to say that those people have restricted access under clause 19, which is then clarified in clause 20? It seems oddly structured, rather than have all the powers defined in one clause, to have brought them into clause 20(4).
The other area of interest here, which has not yet been discussed, is clause 20(2), which again makes reference to the exclusion of the personal audit data of paragraph 9 of schedule 1. I want to clarify the intention here. Clause 20(2) says
''provision of . . . information not falling within paragraph 9 of schedule 1 is authorised by this section''
and then talks about the anti-terrorism, crime and security elements that we have just discussed. Is it the intention, therefore, that the audit data will never be disclosed under these 2001 Act provisions?
Subsection (2) seems to suggest that a if public body is able to disclose information under the 2001 Act, it will not include the paragraph 9 of schedule 1 information. If someone needed to get hold of that, it would have to be disclosed under clause 19 and clause 20(4) powers. I am trying to understand the matrix of clauses 19 and 20—the net effect for the system as to when this potentially very comprehensive and very personal data might be disclosed.
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Another point that it might be helpful to have clarified is the scope of the audit trail. We have discussed the audit trail: I can understand why the Government are damned if they do and damned if they don't, as not having one is problematic while having one is potentially intrusive.
Again, to understand the scope of that audit trail, it would be helpful to know what data are to be disclosed under subsection (4). Will they form a whole-life record? That is the key question. Are we saying that from the moment somebody gets an identity card, which is going to be fairly swiftly if the Government have their way, the audit trail will be kept for whole of life? If at no point will it be deleted as historic data, the data that can be disclosed under clause 20(4) will be potentially intrusive and comprehensive. The public ought to be aware of the extent to which those data will be kept and the circumstances under which they may be disclosed.
Mr. Malins: I would like to make one point—a general one—which was put to me by the Commission for Racial Equality. This is its view, so it is appropriate that I mention it in the clause stand part debate, although it covers other clauses, too. It is important that the Minister knows that the CRE is concerned that in the current anti-terrorism climate, the disclosure powers—combined with increasing racial or religious profiling—provide the opportunity to target particular groups or categories of person. It reminds us that the stop-and-search rate for black and Asian people under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 is between four and five times higher than that for white people.
Also, the commission is concerned that Muslims may be over-represented in those data and fears that there may be racial profiling of suspected terrorists or targeting of the Muslim community, particularly by the police and intelligence services. It believes that it is essential that threats posed by a few individuals do not translate into measures that, especially since 11 September, are perceived as being targeted exclusively on Muslims or on any other racial or faith community. It wants safeguards to be in place to ensure that the practical use of the national identity register by prescribed agencies reflects that.
It is a regular procedure in the House that interest groups express their concerns about certain issues to Members and I thought it my duty to pass on those points to the Minister. This clause is very important; it is potentially extremely intrusive on the lives of individuals in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cotswold has said, we are discussing a situation in which there is no consent from the individual and disclosure of information by the Home Secretary to a variety of bodies—home security services, the police, the Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise. It is my understanding that any information is authorised to be disclosed to the security services if it is in connection with their functions and that information provided to the other agencies is acceptable if it is in the interests of national security or the prevention or detection of crime, or for other reasons that the Home Secretary will specify by
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order. If that is right, perhaps the Minister will talk to us about those other reasons.
The most troubling aspect is in paragraph 9 of schedule 1. We return to it time and again, and the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam is entirely right to draw our attention to the problems with it. If one is searching for wording that is not plain English and that needs to be carefully analysed to decide what it means in practice, one need look no further than paragraph 9, which is very important. It states:
''The following may be recorded in the entry in the Register for an individual—
(a) particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual's entry has been provided to a person''.
What does that mean? Does it mean that every single time any information about me is provided to anybody, that has to be—or can be—recorded in the register? Does sub-paragraph (b) mean that every single time such information is provided, a note will be made on the register of to whom it has been provided?
I am especially concerned about sub-paragraph (c). It refers to
''other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.''
What on earth does the word ''particulars'' mean in that context?
That brings us on to the whole issue of what some briefing papers call the audit trail and the clause's potentially intrusive nature with regard to my life. Let me explain my understanding of it. The Minister would do well to confirm or deny it, because there are those outside the Committee who will want to know what is kept on the register, and who has access to it and for what purposes. I understand that in due course my register entry will have been set up, but my identity card may or may not replace my passport. Will he confirm that every time I travel using a travel document, that fact will be noted on the register and I will, in a sense, be followed in an audit trail with the facts being noted on the register and accessible by other people for various purposes?
Will the Minister tell us, particularly in relation to the words
''other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information'',
not only who will have access to all that, and in what circumstances and for how long, but which activities of mine could possibly be on the register and which of the various bodies will have access to the information?
I assume that I will get my card on a certain date, having first been on the register. For the sake of the debate, let us say that I am 35. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam asked for how long the audit trail will continue. Will it continue to my death, perhaps 50 years later? By then, what information about me will have been built up on the register? Virtually all my business and domestic activities, and my travel, will be on there for people to access. Is there a cut-off point, after a certain number of years, when this information will be deleted?
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