Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I am grateful to the Minister for answering fully those questions avoided by Mr McNulty in another place. He has been helpful in taking forward the debate. For example, his response in respect of Amendment No. 96 makes it possible for me not to bring forward a further amendment on Report. Indeed, I suspect that most if not all of the other amendments in the group may not need to be tabled again.

The Minister's answer in regard to the travel arrangements for stateless persons is helpful. One has to be careful regarding this issue for security reasons while remaining sensitive to those who for proper reasons seek to travel.

I am of course intrigued by the underlying argument put forward by the Government on some of these amendments that they have in hiding around the corner a list of documents for future designation. We shall turn our attention to that later today. I shall not trespass on later amendments by going into my unease at this point.

Questions still need to be asked about the sheer range of numbers, in particular the possible reissue of the number on the national identity register. Some confusion could arise in the future. I am old enough to have had a schoolgirl crush on Patrick McGoohan in "The Prisoner", in which he was Number 6. He would say, "I am not a number". Here not only are we going to be numbers, we will be a heck of a lot of numbers. One of the arguments in support of identity cards is that this will be a convenient method of identification, so that one would not have to hold a raft of different means of proving identity. However, the Minister's response has been helpful in terms of being able to winnow what will need to be brought back on Report. I shall read Hansard carefully and, if I may, I shall notify noble Lords who have taken part in the debate of the amendments that will not need to be brought forward again on Report.

The Earl of Onslow: Before my noble friend withdraws her amendment, I have to say how depressed I am by seeing that long, long list of things
 
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that have to be added to the register. It goes to the heart of my concern that the Bill is a bureaucratic and intolerable nightmare.

The Countess of Mar: The Minister said that replacement cards would have to have a new number. Is that new number in order to control the people issuing the cards to ensure that they are not fraudulent? If it is not, why can we not have an A, B, C and so on at the end of the existing number as each new card is issued to the same person? This would enable them to have their own number.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: My guess is that it will be sequential, as it is with your cheque or Visa card. These have a different issue number each time you are issued with a card. I do not see a great difficulty with that. It seems quite a logical system.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lord Onslow about some of the problems. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 93 to 95A not moved.]

[Amendment No. 95B had been withdrawn from the Marshalled List.]

[Amendment No. 96 not moved.]

Lord Phillips of Sudbury moved Amendment No. 96A:

Page 43, line 8, leave out paragraph (c).

The noble Lord said: The amendment seeks to delete the final sub-paragraph from paragraph 9 of Schedule 1. As noble Lords by now will know, paragraph 9 is the most sensitive part of Schedule 1: it allows the most intimate information vis-à-vis the national identity register to be captured by the state, in effect, in respect of any person with an ID card. Paragraph 9 is given special treatment, quite rightly, in various parts of the Bill because of the sensitivity of its information, which is sometimes referred to as "audit trail" information. For example, Clause 19(4) refers to the rights of certain public authorities to access data on the national identity register but it does not extend to paragraph 9 information.

This is a probing amendment because I am anxious to know what is meant to be covered by paragraph 9(c), which is couched in wide terms. Nearly everyone who has spoken has said more than once that we have a duty with a Bill of this nature to be quite sure that we know what we are letting ourselves in for hereafter—or, rather, what we are letting our fellow citizens in for—and to be sceptical as to the need for a wide definition of powers. It is not at present clear to me what sub-paragraph (c) is intended to capture beyond the clear provisions of sub-paragraphs (a) and (b). I await with interest the Government's response to the
 
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amendment, which I am prepared to withdraw if what they say is satisfactory to the Committee. I beg to move.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: I very much share the curiosity of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, who has moved the amendment. I hope the Minister will satisfy us. Paragraph 9(c) is couched in extremely wide terms. It states that,

"other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information".

Is it not possible to be a little more exact than this? Or is it, as I suspect, yet another instance of what I would call the quartermaster mentality of the Home Office and the noble Baroness's advisers—"You never know when we might want some other form of information, so let us put in a general sweeper, a kind of Hoover which will suck in every possibility which might confront us"?

The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, which very much concerns me, is the duty we owe to our fellow citizens. One does not have to look at many newspapers, nor look very far back, to find examples of laws which have passed through your Lordships' House and the other place which have then been attended by the most extraordinary unintended consequences. I do not wish to take up the time of the Committee, but the perfectly nice and very harmless lady who made a speech the other day in front of the Cenotaph about British casualties in Iraq was treated in the most extraordinary fashion. She was taken away by a large escort, when I am quite sure that no Minister had possibly foreseen such a thing happening under that Act of Parliament. At the same time, the gentleman who regularly makes such a nasty mess all over Parliament Square, against whom legislation was aimed, is still there. There is a muddle here.

The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is absolutely right. I worry about the belief that we might need these powers so we had better have them. There is no thought in the minds of Ministers at the time about what some red tape-minded, inquisitive official might make use of. People do not examine passports too carefully in this country, but I have often been asked the most footling questions about details in my passport when I have been abroad. The added requirement that the Bill will put on everybody to inform officials in any country of intimate and numerous details will afford inquisitive officials a marvellous opportunity to bully people and waste their time. I hope that Ministers will bear that in mind, because I am not at all satisfied.

Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I am very interested in what the Minister will say in reply to the amendment. I spoke at Second Reading about how much I thought citizens would come to dislike the register, and this is a very good example. Am I right in thinking that against one's name and all the other information on the register, there will be, under paragraph 9, every date that a government department has asked for information about one? There will be a long string of these as different government departments ask for
 
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details. Every date will be included, as well as details of who has asked the question, and sub-paragraph (c) provides for the particulars they are asking about. The more questions that mount up, the more suspect one will look to another department tuning in.

The Minister is shaking her head, but I am trying to picture what my entry will look like as one government department after another asks the register about me. Under paragraph 9, the register can show the particulars that were wanted on each occasion. Anyone else looking at this will wonder why all these people want so much information. It will be very interesting to hear what the noble Baroness tells us about paragraph 9(c).

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Peyton, said about the lady who was arrested by two police sergeants and 10 police constables for the heinous offence of reading out the names of our soldiers who have been killed in Iraq. I sympathise with what he said. The only thing that I did not sympathise with was when he intimated that Ministers had no idea that this sort of thing would happen. There is no reason why they would not have been aware because, when matters were discussed in this House, Ministers were warned of the dangers of the unintended consequences of the legislation, which does not allow a person to make any demonstration within 1,000 metres of Parliament without police permission.

4.45 pm