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Mr. Redwood: My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case, as always. Could he speculate on why so few peers support the Government on this, given how many new peers have been invited into the House of Lords under this Administration with this very generous Prime Minister? Could it be because they think that the Government have a lousy case?
David Davis:
Of course they think that the Government have a lousy case. As I said before, there is opposition to the Bill across all parties. Some Labour Members who have severe worries about the Bill are bravely resisting it. I have made the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) wait for some time, so I shall give way to him.
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Chris Bryant: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman because he said "No", then "Yes", then "Maybe", but now he says "Yes".
Chris Bryant: I am deeply grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He said earlier that he thought it was a gross infringement on the ancient liberties of the British people for the state to insist on somebody carrying an ID card. But, as I understand it, he believes that it is entirely appropriate for the state to insist that people should carry a passport when they fly into or out of the country. Why does he not see that there is a paradox there?
David Davis: There is no paradox; however, the point is interesting because I did not say what the hon. Gentleman said I said. Throughout this process, I have always argued—this is an extremely serious point and I am taking the hon. Gentleman's comment seriously—that the problem is not the piece of plastic, such as the type of card that I am holding up, which we all carry for a specific purpose. It is what is behind it. The database is the serious issue. I am entirely in favour of biometrics on passports, but we do not need to have a national identity register, which is what is proposed.
Andy Burnham: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
David Davis: Certainly not. The Under-Secretary, who sits and heckles, gets it all wrong and will not take part in the debate, now wants to take part on an à la carte basis. This is a table d'hôte proposal by the Government and they are going to get a table d'hôte response from me. The latest argument is the ludicrous—I use that word advisedly—assertion by the Home Secretary that having an ID card will limit the intrusions of the state upon the person. That is an extraordinary argument.
If that were not daft enough, the Home Secretary tells us that citizens will find having an ID card useful, and even valuable. The technology director of Microsoft, no less, pointed out that the identity register will be a honeypot for hackers, fraudsters, thieves and terrorists. It will worsen the risk of identity theft. Far from being an infallible security system, we hear this week that the Government intend to rely on chip and pin technology to protect the card—the same technology that we have used for years in the common, everyday Visa card. So much for improving our personal security.
Simon Hughes: Is not the answer to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that until today we have never required this document, a passport, to travel in our country?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. Visual aids are strongly discouraged, not least because the reporters of the Official Report find it very difficult to understand what the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
Simon Hughes:
Will the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) accept that we
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have never required a passport to travel in our own country and, even if the Government were to implement their proposal, we would not be required to carry one?
David Davis: The hon. Gentleman is right. It is one of the distinctions of our country that we are not required to identify ourselves at every turn. We are not required to live in a society that requires us to produce a pass of any sort. That is one of the things that has distinguished us as a country over many years, indeed, centuries.
Andy Burnham: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
David Davis: No, I will not. The hon. Gentleman had his chance, and he missed it.
Kali Mountford: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
David Davis: I want to come to a close on this.
If an ID card were really valuable to the citizen, as the Home Secretary claims, presumably ordinary citizens would want them; everybody would want them if they were as valuable as the Home Secretary claims. So why are the Government not willing to leave citizens to make decisions for themselves? If cards are going to be popular, if they are going to make people happy, if they are going to do things for them, then they will take them up of their own accord. What we are talking about today is the compulsion issue—they will not need to be compelled to have an ID card. Of course, the Government do not believe their own argument. That became clear in the Home Secretary's view of this amendment.
Laura Moffatt (Crawley) (Lab): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
The Government believe that unless they force a majority of the population to have an ID card by covert compulsion, they will never win the vote to make it compulsory in the final analysis. They know that if the card is not compulsory, it will not just be ineffective against terrorism, fraud, illegal immigration and crime; it will be completely useless.
Listening to the Home Secretary go on about the extra costs arising from the scheme, I was almost dumbstruck. The Opposition are not imposing £20 billion on the public for no virtue—we are not doing that, but that is what will happen.
Covert compulsion has become necessary to the Government's ill-starred strategy, which is incompetent in design, ineffective in execution and deceitful in delivery; but that does not mean that it is not dangerous. The proposal will completely invert the relationship between the citizen and the state. As we saw from the statement that preceded the debate, the Government too often forget that they are the servant of the people, not the other way round. The right to my identity is held by me, not by the state. My right to my citizenship is my birthright, not the gift of the Government, and our
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right as British citizens to our liberty and privacy should not be carelessly thrown away. That is why I ask everyone in the House to support the Lords in their defence of the rights of individual British citizens against unnecessary intrusion into their lives by an over-meddlesome Government, apparently bent on creating a surveillance state.
Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent, Central) (Lab): The debate and the disagreement between the other place and our House turn on whether the scheme is compulsory or voluntary. The Home Secretary is right to remind us that we should need primary legislation if the scheme were to be completely compulsory, but the Bill establishes, by the back door, a halfway house to compulsion. Why?
I suspect that the real reason is that the Home Secretary is not confident. When we eventually reach the stage of introducing primary legislation to make the scheme compulsory, he wants to be able to tell the House and the public, "Sixty per cent. of people in the UK already have an ID card. What are you worried about?" However, the only reason that 60 per cent. of people will have a card will be as a result of this back-door way of compelling them to have a card if they want a passport or a driving licence.
It is perfectly respectable for the Home Secretary to want a universal card, but as the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said, the proposed scheme will not be effective; the card certainly will not achieve any of the things that the Government hope for it against terrorism, international fraud and so on, unless it is universal. The idea that it could be semi-universal actually denies the whole purpose of an ID card, certainly in terms of its practical effectiveness.
It is not unreasonable for the Home Secretary to want a universal card, but he does not want to legislate for it now because he knows that he would not get the measure through—[Interruption.] No, he is not legislating for a compulsory card. If he did that now, he knows that the Government would have to pay the full costs for such a card. He could not compel people to have a card and to pay £90 for it. He knows that a compulsory card would have to be financed by the Government and the Chancellor does not want to do that, so we have this rather dishonest and disingenuous halfway scheme.
If the Government and the Home Secretary were really confident about the proposed card, they would trust the British people. If the Home Secretary feels that he can make an overwhelming case for the importance of an identity card—as he undoubtedly does; I think that he is entirely sincere—he should trust his judgment and make that case to the British people. He should say, "Believe me, we will benefit from the card so volunteer for it", but he cannot introduce the scheme by compulsion. In proceeding by compulsion, he does not trust the British people. He certainly does not trust the people when he proposes this semi, rather false voluntary scheme, which is in effect compulsory.
2.15 pm
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