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Lord Crickhowell: This is an important group of amendments. I have added my name to Amendments Nos. 105 and 106, and tabled separately Amendments Nos. 107, 152 to 154 and 160. The current wording in the Bill is pretty extraordinary. Amendments Nos. 105 to 109 refer to the voluntary stage in the proceedings for anyone who wishes to apply for an ID card. Amendments Nos. 152 to 154 address the scheme when it later becomes compulsory. Under both
 
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clauses, the Bill states that the Secretary of State may "require" the applicant to do a number of things as he "thinks fit". Among the things that the Secretary of State may think it fit to require the applicant to do is to,

I am not aware of any other piece of legislation that places a legal requirement on the individual to attend at a "specified place and time", whether or not it is convenient or practical for him to do so. In those circumstances, I think we are entitled to lay down certain basic requirements and to get a great deal more information out of the Government.

Like those tabled by my noble friend, my amendments refer to "convenience". For example, Amendment No. 107 would replace the words,

with,

Amendment No. 160 goes much further. It provides that before we give the Government the go-ahead on the scheme, we should be told very much more about their plans. It would require the Government to produce a report for Parliament detailing the arrangements to be made and for those arrangements to be approved by Parliament before the scheme can go ahead.

Surely no one can doubt that getting the whole thing under way on the basis of public acceptability is very important. Earlier today I quoted from a report prepared by several technical experts. They comment that:

But Hong Kong has certain advantages. It covers a relatively small area. Those of us who live in the remoter parts of the countryside think that things here may not be so easy. The report goes on:

The Government must have gone into this in some detail because their published regulatory impact assessment and the letter circulated by the noble Baroness both state that the costings produced so far include the costs of setting up the places at which registration is to take place. Significantly, however, the costings do not include the costs applicable to the Foreign Office, embassies and consular posts. I have referred to this on previous occasions and I shall refrain from further comment until we reach the debate to be held later when we return to the question of costs.
 
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6.15 pm

One further aspect ought to be borne in mind when considering this issue: the question of staffing. Again, the report comments:

The report goes on to set out further detailed comments on those matters, and states that,

all the technological gimmicks that are produced will be "of little use". We are dealing here with the importance of providing convenient places for the public which are properly and efficiently managed to deal with the security aspects at costs that are reasonable not only in this country, as I have pointed out, but also in Foreign Office bases around the world. People lose their passports and they have to be replaced, as happened to me on one occasion. I think that we are entitled to some pretty detailed information about these arrangements before we give the scheme the go-ahead.

At the back of my mind I have a memory that, at some point in our proceedings, either the noble Baroness or the noble Lord on the Front Bench beside her referred to the provision of something like 70 enrolment centres. However, I may not have that right. If it is to be 70 enrolment centres, let us look at what we are talking about. Even if only a handful are set up in London, where the public transport system is very good, and just one or two in each of the major cities, the numerical score would still drop down quite quickly. What will people do in Scotland? It is no good saying to those living in the remoter areas that there is a centre in Inverness, let alone to those who live in the outer isles. It would not do any good to tell my former constituents around St David's that they have to go to Carmarthen, Swansea or even Cardiff. My home is in Powys and I am not sure where I would have to go. In order to provide adequate cover, there will have to be to be a lot of centres, some of which will have to be mobile.

Similarly, what are we going to do about those who are handicapped in one way or another and therefore cannot travel on public transport, but need access just the same to an identity card centre?

The Earl of Onslow: If, as my noble friend has pointed out, there are to be only 70 registration centres and the population of this country is nearly 60 million—and assuming a 60 per cent take up, including children—that means that each centre will have a client base of three-quarters of a million people. Is this cloud cuckoo land or is this cloud cuckoo land?

Lord Crickhowell: As I said, I may be wrong about the number. The Minister may leap to his feet and say that I have got it totally wrong and there will be 700, with an army of people going out in mobile units visiting old people's homes, and that all will be simply
 
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marvellous. All I am saying is, whatever the good intentions of the Government, we have learnt enough about their performance in such matters—indeed, in their handling of the Bill—not to have total confidence in them, particularly as they will not give us any serious facts about the costs. Again, I will not jump ahead to a debate, but we have had the letter which the noble Baroness has circulated, not by e-mail but by mail—I am sorry that her instructions were not carried out by her department because I would have had the entire weekend to examine it in further detail—and it is quite clear that the arguments advanced in it on the costs question are largely specious. Therefore I am even more suspicious when they tell me, "We have costed the provision of these arrangements for ensuring that people are registered".

I support my noble friend's amendment. Unless I get a very good answer, I shall be inclined to press later my Amendment No. 160, which requires that there should be a report to Parliament and that Parliament should be allowed to judge the adequacy of the Government's arrangements before the scheme goes ahead.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I have three amendments in this group—Amendment No. 108, Amendment No. 155, which deals with the same arrangements in Clause 9, and Amendment No. 170A, which deals with the same arrangements in Clause 12. I cannot add anything useful to what has been said already by the noble Lords who have spoken to Amendments Nos. 106 and 107. I prefer the wording of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, to my own. If I had seen it when I sat down to prepare them I would have withheld my pen.

As to the amendment moved by the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, to require someone to attend at a specified place and time "at his convenience" might be taking things slightly too far the other way. It could lead to a lot of argy-bargy when someone says that it is not convenient for him to attend for the next three months.

There are many problems with a scheme of this sort, which is—I must stop saying this—in world terms, a first. It seeks to establish a national register of everybody and involves everybody being interviewed before they can get an identity card and so on. One of the problems is that it gives rise to such bureaucratic problems that one ends up having to take short cuts with what one might call our normal way of doing things. It surely must be right that the requirement to attend for an interview should be subject to the particulars of the person concerned—for instance, you may be dealing with an old woman who is ill, or a silly old man who is ill, or a silly young man without a motor car. One can think of so many circumstances where, unless there was some reasonable qualification of the requirement, people could be put into the position where, under Clause 33—this is the other point—they would be subject to an automatic penalty. Officials are not even required under the Bill to inquire of the person who failed to attend an interview why he or she failed to attend. They are not required to give notice of the intention to impose a penalty, they simply impose it. If you then say, "Oh hang on, I had a heart
 
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attack the day before", they do not say, "Oh well, that's all right, you can appeal to the county court". No, they go one better than that: they say that the Secretary of State can then cancel the penalty. That is jolly good of him but, under our system, we do not impose penalties of up to £2,500 on people before we ask them the circumstances giving rise to the failure.

Anyhow, enough is enough. I hope the noble Baroness will see the force of this very basic piece of British manners and allow one of these amendments.

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