Damian
Green: No, the right hon. Gentleman is entirely misquoting
my hon. Friend. He is trying to quote from the letter that my hon.
Friend wrote to contractors who might be contracting for the ID card
itself, in which he advised them all that a Conservative Government
would scrap the scheme and that they should take that into account in
their business
planning. I
know that the right hon. Gentleman, who was one of the begetters of
this wretched scheme in the first place, is understandably attached to
it. It may well have been he, as one of the many Home Secretaries in
the past five years, who first thought to try to hide all the costs in
the cost of biometric passports, which are already being issued, and
therefore to pretend that there would be no benefit to the individual
or taxpayers in scrapping it. However, he knows as well as I do that
that is not true, and, having been on the scene a long time, he also
knows that those of us who oppose the scheme have always opposed the
national identity register as well as the cards themselves.
The statutory
instruments are doomed. This is an unreal debate, so, rather than argue
in detail about everything that is wrong with the regulations, may I
just ask the Minister some questions? I am conscious that he already
has some questions to answer, but this might be the most useful way of
teasing out what is wrong with the
regulations. I
will begin with the Identity Cards Act 2006 (Prescribed Information)
Regulations 2009, and the first regulation on citation, commencement
and interpretation. Will the Minister tell us how it will be decided
what should and should not be encrypted? Given all the problems of data
security over the past few years, he will be aware that the safety of
encryption is hugely important to citizens who, if the Government have
their way, will have ID cards foisted on
them. The
Minister said that the Government would issue ID cards to EEA
nationals, to whom the regulation also refers. Will he give the
Committee an idea of the time that an EEA national will need to be in
this country before they become obliged to have an identity card? Will
it be three months or longer? If an EEA national applies for an ID
card, will the data collected by the Government be shared with the
country of origin? As a subset of that question, will he tell us what
data sharing arrangements the UK has with each of the other EEA
countries, and will they be amended to include the national identity
register? As
for the information recorded on an ID card, how will the Government
guarantee that an applicant who is not interviewed has not forged or
given a misleading answer on the application form? We accept that
biometrics can be useful, but one of the disadvantages of an
over-reliance on biometrics is that a false identity can be
fixed for someone, which could be disastrous in terms of
security. While
on the subject of the efficacy of biometrics, will the Minister remind
the Committee of the error percentage in fingerprint recognition,
because there is a temptation to have this debate as though biometrics
were some kind of magic wand that never fails. Although iris
recognition is not completely reliable, it is more reliable than
fingerprints, which have quite a high percentage of failures. If we are
to rely completely on fingerprints for security, anti-fraud and all the
other things that we are told ID cards will solve, we should go into it
with our eyes open and know that there will be
failures. Encryption
has many security angles, and the prescribed information section of the
regulation is interesting, particularly in relation to addresses. I
know the Minister is considering what happens if someone is homeless,
but there have been representations from groups concerned with violence
against women about the prospect of people being able to hack into
computers and find addresses of women who may have been victims of
domestic violence. Under the legislation, such women will be forced to
reveal their address, which is precisely what they do not want to do
and what the women’s refuge movement seeks to prevent. Will the
Minister indicate what protection can be given to those women in such
circumstances? The
Minister has explained what the Identity Cards Act 2006 (Application
and Issue of ID Card and Notification of Changes) Regulations 2009 are
about. With regard to the manner of application for entry in the
national identity register, the Government now say that individuals may
seek to apply of their own volition for an ID card, but that must be
accompanied by an application for entry in the national identity
register. We know that passports are one of the relevant documents. It
would be interesting to know what the other Government documents are
and whether there are plans for including other Government
documents—for instance, when the Department for Work and
Pensions issues national insurance numbers. Will the fees for
application for entry in the register remain separate from the passport
fee, or will the fee eventually be combined? Will all new passport fees
include the cost of data entry, staff and the running costs of the
national identity register? Will the application for a designated
document and entry in the national identity register be handled in a
unified application
process? Finally,
what plans are there to require those on the national identity register
through their passport application also to apply for an ID card? The
Minister has talked to us about the civil penalties. I hope that he can
answer the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire
about penalties, which seemed extremely
relevant. We
have seen over the past few days, with the Government’s U-turn
on compulsion for airside workers, and the evident confusion in
ministerial ranks at Home Office questions this afternoon, that this
whole exercise is now proceeding on a wing and a prayer and has no
impetus behind it. The fact that one day Ministers are saying that
passports and ID cards are practically identical, and at other
times—sometimes in the same speech—that we need ID cards
as well as passports, shows the essential confusion at the heart of
this project. Over the past five
years or so, a number of reasons have been given as to why identity
cards will benefit the British population. All of those have now been
stripped away. Those who
have a passport—the vast majority of people in this
country—already have a perfectly satisfactory form of
identification.
Mr.
Blunkett: I understand that the Conservative
party’s policy is to reintroduce embarkation checks, which will
allow us to know who is coming in and going out of the country. Will
the hon. Gentleman explain to the Committee how his party will manage
to do that, if it has no idea who is in the country in the first
place?
Damian
Green: Foreigners who enter the country legally—not
the many who enter illegally under the lax border controls of the
regime of the right hon. Gentleman and his successors as Home
Secretary—must have a passport. We know what their passport
number is. We used to check them on the way in and on the way out and
we could do that again. That is the advantage of passports. As I was
saying, a new multi-billion pound edifice does not need to be erected
to replicate the advantage that we get from
passports.
Mr.
Burns: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the United States
has no national identity card and yet keeps very strict checks on who
comes into and who leaves the
country?
Damian
Green: There are many countries that do not have national
identity cards. We do not need to look at the United States; various
members of the European Union and other democracies around the world do
not have national identity cards, as there is no need. Ministers now
admit that the national identity card does not solve the problems of
border security, as it was originally said to do. That argument has
already been won. The small minority of people who choose not to have a
passport have perfectly good ways of establishing their
identity—they do not need this new, expensive
scheme. The
cards that will come as a result of the statutory instruments before us
are simply unnecessary burdens on the citizens of this country and the
already hugely stretched public finances. We will therefore vote
against the regulations.
4.54
pm Tom
Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): May I also start
by saying that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this
afternoon, Mrs. Dean? Now is not the time to have a debate
about the general principle of identity cards. I am sure,
Mrs. Dean, that you would not allow us to have such a
debate. There will be an opportunity in the Chamber for that debate to
take place.
Members will
know that the Liberal Democrat position has been consistently to oppose
identity cards, and that remains our position. As the hon. Member for
Ashford said, it feels as though we are just going through the motions
in this debate. A certain amount of momentum has clearly built up
behind the project and is carrying through a tail end of statutory
instruments along with it, while Members on both sides of the Committee
are aware that the project will wither on the vine and
disappear shortly. However, we must still debate, with perhaps less
enthusiasm than might normally be the case, the statutory instruments
before us. I should like
the Minister to clarify a number of points. The issue of homeless
people has been raised, but there are many other people who will find
it hard to prove their identity. I have had a recent case of someone
who has been trying to confirm his identity with a bank to access money
that his mother left him. He does not have a birth certificate, a
driving licence or any other form of identification. I know that the
Minister will say that that is exactly why he needs an identity card,
but this person will find it very difficult to get one because he does
not have access to the sort of identification that people normally
have.
Mr.
Blunkett: I am not trying to be a nuisance this afternoon.
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that his statement totally
contradicts the assertion of the hon. Member for Ashford that people
have no problem in providing clear
identity?
Tom
Brake: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his
intervention. On the whole, people will have no difficulty proving
their identity. However, there will be a very small number of people
whose personal circumstances are so complex that they do not have
access to documents such as driving licences, birth certificates and so
on. If the Minister is going to address the issue of homelessness, I
hope that he will confirm how someone with no formal means of
identification will be able to obtain an identity card under the
Government
scheme. Will
the Minister clarify what spare capacity will be left on the chip once
all the data, to which he has referred, will be contained therein, so
that we can see what the potential is for extending the data?
The hon. Member for Ashford has highlighted the issue of
reliability, and I hope that the Minister will respond to that. I am
sure that Members on both sides of the Committee will be aware of
people who, when travelling to the US, have encountered difficulties
with fingerprints. A friend of mine, who failed her fingerprint test,
was told, “At the point that your fingerprints were taken, your
fingers were warm. When you went through the airport, they were cold,
and, therefore, the two did not match.” The potential for
mismatches is very significant and the issue of reliability is one on
which we need to be clear.
Will the
Minister also clarify how many identity cards the Government expect to
be lost and returned? The Minister does not know how many will be
issued, as we have gone from a proposed mandatory scheme for airport
workers to a now voluntary one. We have no idea what other aspects of
the scheme will be made voluntary as well. Presumably, the Government
can tell us, if a certain number of cards are issued, what percentage
will be lost. They have said that the issue of young people frequently
losing their passports was one of the justifications for introducing
identity cards. Presumably, the figures for lost passports will be
roughly the same as those for lost identity cards. I hope that the
Minister will give us some clarity on that
point. I
was intrigued to see that membership of the Privy Council may be
recorded on an identity card. I can understand the security reasons for
that, but are there
any other special categories that we have not considered? I am sure the
Minister will clarify whether Privy Council members will have their own
separate entry or flag. With those
few queries and without engaging in a long debate about the purpose of
identity cards that will be unacceptable to you, Mrs. Dean,
I will end my contribution. I hope that the Minister will be able to
provide some clarity on the questions that I have
raised.
5
pm
Tony
Baldry: One problem with statutory instrument Committees
is that they are usually a combination of hon. Members who have
immersed themselves in the topic. Today, on the Committee, there are no
fewer than two former Home Secretaries, although only one is present.
Those colleagues will have been present during debates on the Bill, on
Second Reading and in Committee, from which the statutory instrument
arises. There will also be those, like me, who are concerned about the
issue but have not been immersed in it on a daily basis. I ask the
Committee’s indulgence for a second, so that I can genuinely try
to enhance my understanding of what is going
on. I
do not think that anyone is opposed to biometric passports. Such
passports are now being issued. I and, I suspect, many other right hon.
and hon. Members now have a biometric passport. One can go along to the
passport office, pay for a biometric passport and use it to travel and,
if one wishes, to demonstrate that the bearer of the passport is the
person they say they
are. The
issue this afternoon—the great and overwhelming issue that we
keep coming back to in respect of identity cards—is whether they
are voluntary or compulsory. We saw something of the confusion about
all that in the Chamber this afternoon, with the Home Secretary
mentioning the need to notify the DVLA if one changes one’s
address. However, there is a distinction between the DVLA and the
driving licence and an identity card. One of the main reasons why one
must have one’s identity updated on a driving licence is that if
there is a suggestion that one has committed a moving traffic offence
or a criminal offence, the police will know where one lives and where
to serve notice of criminal proceedings, if those should arise. That is
entirely different from having an ID
card. Barry
Gardiner (Brent, North) (Lab): Having just been recalled
to renew my photo ID within the 10-year period, that was not the reason
given to me; it was required because people’s looks change over
the period and an accurate photographic element to the driving licence
is needed so that it is clear that the person and the photograph
match.
Tony
Baldry: I am either being uncharacteristically
inarticulate or the hon. Gentleman did not understand what I was
saying. I think the hon. Gentleman was in the Chamber this afternoon,
so he will have heard the Home Secretary acknowledge and
confirm—as has been confirmed this afternoon in the Committee by
the Minister—that one does not need to notify the passport
office if one has changed one’s address. The Home Secretary then
gave me the analogy that one needs to
notify the DVLA if one has changed one’s address. That is nothing
to do with changing a photograph once every 10 years, which is a
completely different point from the one that I was
making. One
has to inform the DVLA if one has changed one’s address so that
the Crown Prosecution Service or the police authorities can serve one
with the requisite notices if one is accused of committing a moving
traffic offence or anything of that kind. That is totally different
from what is happening in these measures. I would not quarrel
particularly, although I do not regard it as an especially good use of
public money, if people want to pay for an ID card that contains some
of the information contained in the biometric passport, in addition to
having such a passport, because there may be some justification for
that. However, there is no justification for creating a number of
criminal offences relating to that document. The Minister says that it
is a civil penalty. However, I suspect that for most of our
constituents, whether it is a civil penalty or a criminal penalty will
be a moot point. The reality is that if one obtains an ID card and
fails to notify the authorities when one has changed address, that will
be an offence punishable by a fine. I suspect that the people who
suddenly find that they are most affected will be students, young
people, those who often move home, and those for whom English may not
be their first language. I can imagine whole new groups of
offences.
The Home
Secretary has proclaimed recently that he wants the ID system to be
voluntary and has said that he has taken a different route for
Manchester airport because he was not receiving co-operation from
employees while there was an element of compulsion. That is fine, but
if we all agree that ID cards need to be voluntary and that we will
move forward sensibly, surely it makes no sense to couple up with the
issuing of ID cards a whole load of civil and criminal sanctions
whereby people will be fined if they do not comply or do certain
things. Why on earth should anyone want to take out an ID card if they
realise that they may be subject to civil sanctions and penalties?
Surely, they will just stick to their biometric passport and a driving
licence. I cannot think of any circumstances in which one could not
prove one’s identity satisfactorily by producing a passport
and/or a driving
licence. The
draft regulations seem to involve an enormous amount of money, and the
Government seem to be confused as to whether the system is voluntary or
compulsory. The sooner they sort that out, the easier it will be for
them to take their policy
forward.
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