Baroness Carnegy of Lour: Would it not be more honest of the Government to stop talking about the scheme being voluntary at the moment? People are saying to me, "I do not worry about identity cards; it is voluntary for the time being. It may never become compulsory". Would it not be more honest to say, "It is compulsory if you want to have a passport"? That would be much more honest. It is not voluntary at all if you want to have a passport. I think that that double-speak is doing a lot of damage and, in the long run, will make people less trusting of the whole scheme.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I hear what the noble Baroness says, but at the moment if one has a passport, or has only recently obtained a passport, it will last for 10 years. Therefore, throughout that period you will not have to even think about the issue, unless you specifically want, for your own purposes, to become additionally registered so that you can get an ID card and just use it to go to Europe. Many people—and I am sure that the noble Baroness has had this said to her—cannot wait for that to happen because they think that it will be very useful and helpful, and they want it for their everyday lives.

But those of us who have a passport which is likely to last a long time—say, for the next 10 years—and anyone who gets a biometric passport, say, next April, and that lasts for 10 years, will have to decide, until the scheme becomes compulsory, whether they want to continue with that. Many will fall within that category.

If one has to apply for a passport later, once the designated documents are used—you will get a combined ID card and passport—and you choose not to use your ID card but only to use your passport, that is a matter for you. We have made clear in the Bill that you do not have to carry an ID card with you, you will not have to produce it to anyone and it will not therefore be used as an identity card which has to be produced for any specific purpose. So it enables us to set up the system in a way that is perfectly proper but which retains an opportunity for people to voluntarily apply for an ID card if they still have a current passport, or if they do not want to take advantage of this they do not have to have a passport. It is a choice we all have even now.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: Until my noble friend Lady Carnegy's intervention, I was going to be a lot kinder in my response than I now have to be, because I think that my noble friend has elicited from the Minister a very worrying attempt at reassurance. The Minister tells us that we do not need to be concerned if we have—as I have—a passport renewed only within the last year because renewal is something way off in the future that I do not have to worry about.
 
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The fact is that on 15 November in this House, as reported at col. 994, the Minister estimated that, by restricting the scheme to passport designation, by the time—if this Government were still in power—they wished to move to the full period of compulsion, 85 per cent of the population would already be on the national identity register. That does not square with the reassurance that she has just tried to give my noble friend. We will need to debate that point at length in other groups of amendments because it goes to the very heart of the reservations some of us have about this scheme.

I will return to the part where I was going to accept some reassurances—if I can reassure the Minister on that. The Minister gave a very careful and detailed response to my amendments, for which I am grateful. She gave an assurance with regard to Amendment No. 101 in particular, which I will read extremely carefully in Hansard. But I took it that I could be assured that the Government will not require the surrender of a document in order to engineer the issue of a designated document. The noble Baroness nods her head. In that case, I shall want to talk to my noble friends who are speaking to the Road Safety Bill because, as I understand it, when we divided recently in this House to remove Clauses 29 and 30 from that Bill, it was to ensure that the very assurance that the Minister has just given us was enshrined within that Bill for driving licences. The assurance that the noble Baroness has given the Committee today on Amendment No. 101 may well mean that the Government will not seek to overturn the decision of this House to remove Clauses 29 and 30 of the Road Safety Bill. For today, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 102 and 102A not moved.]

On Question, Whether Clause 4 shall stand part of the Bill?

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I oppose the Question that Clause 4 stand part of the Bill. I do not intend to speak at length, but it is worth drawing together a few strands of the debate so far. Clause 4 is particularly troublesome, as has been made clear from our debate on the amendments moved to it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said, it is a back-door means of introducing compulsion of the identity card. Those Members of the Committee dead against a compulsory card are inclined to be dead against Clause 4. As was just said, at Second Reading the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that making passports a designated document would bring in roughly 85 per cent of the adult population.

For the purposes of bringing it in or for designating documents which would have the effect of compulsion, Clause 4 does not have the super-affirmative procedure that other parts of the Bill have—Clause 6, in particular. We must also consider that the
 
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Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee took up the fact that at Second Reading it was stated that,

"documents issued by private bodies".—[Official Report, 31/10/05; col. 114.]

could not be designated documents for the purpose of Clause 4. It has been clear from this afternoon's discussion that that is not so. Most people would consider the Law Society to be a private body, but for the purposes of issuing solicitors' practising certificates, it acts in pursuance of statutory powers and, for that purpose, is a public authority and within the ambit of Clause 4. There are many examples of what the man in the street would consider a private body having such powers. It is the very breadth of the clause that is one of its unacceptable features.

The powers and duties of the designated document authority are also troublesome. Clause 10 lists the functions of persons issuing designated documents. They are extremely wide. They have wide competence; they have the right to revoke designated documents and, hence, the ID cards that go with them; they have the right to require surrender of the same. One wonders just what sort of supervision of those designated bodies the Government propose, because there is little in the Bill. I suppose that they will rely on the fact that the Secretary of State can enter negotiations with a designated document authority, but that is another aspect of the whole designation procedure that we—and I think that I can speak for the Conservative Benches—find completely unacceptable. Clause 10 can be brought into effect under the negative procedure, which is worse still.

Finally, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, in its report of 17 October, chose to draw the House's attention to the provisions of Clause 4 in relation to Clause 10. In effect, it issued a warning to us. Briefly, and because there is a will on the part of many here to resist compulsion, there is a sense that Clause 4 should not stand part of the Bill.

Lord Peyton of Yeovil: Briefly, I say again that I find the vagueness of the clause unacceptable. It begins with the words:

"The Secretary of State may by order".

I sympathise with the noble Baroness that she should have the considerable burden of putting through your Lordships' House a Bill of such vagueness, which provokes real suspicion and hostility. With my sympathy to the noble Baroness, which is not entirely consistent with crocodile tears, I express a slight note of regret that the intending Secretary of State, the present noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, has not seen fit to put in much of an appearance or show his energetic and enthusiastic support, or his eternal gratitude to the noble Baroness for the burden that she has carried.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My name has been joined with that of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, in raising a debate on clause stand part. The noble Lord and I have not always agreed on every
 
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aspect of legislation, so when he says that he thinks that he can speak for the Conservatives, some might be surprised. On this occasion, I stand four-square behind everything that he said about the Question whether the clause shall stand part.