Baroness Knight of Collingtree: When this Bill breathed its first, I decided to regard it with an open mind and see what was proposed and, in particular, read the case for it. As the Bill has proceeded, I have become increasingly concerned. Everything that has been said today has added to my consternation. I agree with every word just said by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart. When people are presented with all of this they will rise up and some of them will say, "We have never had a clear and acceptable explanation of why the Bill is necessary and how much positive good it will do". In my book, it would have to do a great deal of good and be very effective to allow for even 10 per cent of what we have in front of us today. I am appalled at what this Government have put before us. They are daring to ask for our approval for something that strikes out freedom—which is most unjust and totally careless of people's convenience or the way that their lives may be running.
 
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From now on, it is important that more people outside this House understand precisely what is at issue because when they do there certainly will be a sharp push against the Bill ever reaching the statute book. I have no doubt that here we have some excellent fighters who will, from now on, be fighting it every inch of the way.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: I agree with all that has been said by noble Lords. I have a modest amendment to which I will speak briefly. Amendment No. 109 would make it clear that, if a person is directed to attend an enrolment centre, he cannot be forced to attend at a specific time. That is merely in tune with the general thrust of the debate. If people are to be directed to enrolment centres—one of 70 that may not be convenient to them to reach—there should be some measure of accommodation to ensure that they are able to attend in a convenient way. We have talked all the way through this Bill about wanting to achieve a scheme that is convenient to the individual and not merely convenient to the Government. There is certainly some difference of opinion about where the Bill falls in respect of that at the moment.

I support Amendment No. 106 in the name of my noble friend Lord Northesk, which concentrates our minds very strongly on what is convenient. I carefully note what my noble friend Lord Crickhowell said about Amendment No. 160 and the importance of having a report on the operation of the scheme. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, who has been doing sterling work, seems to have waved a magic wand. Every time he mentions a phrase or word, a letter materialises from the Home Office. On this occasion, he correctly directed our attention to the fact that failure to comply with enrolment can lead to a civil penalty—a heavy one. As a result of that, we now have what appears to be a very helpful response from the Home Office dated 9 December. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, for providing us with that. I note that it says that it is an advance note of the civil penalty regime draft code of practice. It states that it is purely an indicative draft and subject to consultation and alteration. I accept that.

However, I note that Amendment No. 124 relates specifically to the matter of issue within this letter and draft code. I must put on record that, when we get to Amendment No. 124 I will do my best, but I will not be able to give any more than a limited response given that I shall have to do another speed read on the Front Bench. I appreciate that it was the good will of the Government to provide the Committee with this copy, but it comes at a rather awkward time for noble Lords to take advantage of it.

6.45 pm

Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I will not answer the amendment, but in relation to the letter, we had hoped that it would go out on Friday with the others,
 
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enclosed in a merry Christmas card—what a wonderful present that would have been. I had hoped that Committee Members would have it early.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I have listened with great care to the debate and a number of useful issues have been raised as a result of it. At one point when I was listening to some of the more fervent contributions, I had a great deal of sympathy with the Committee. When legislation is drafted it is sometimes difficult to see how it will work in practice and to understand how people will perceive and measure it. I was particularly drawn to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy of Lour, who was getting her mind around how the provision would work in practical terms—people receiving information and letters and being called for interviews and so forth. My guess is that, in real terms, the scheme will be much more user-friendly than the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, made it feel. I understand why he wants to make it feel that way because he has a legitimate point. He is opposed to ID cards for a range of arguments that I personally, the Government and Ministers at large disagree with. He is entitled to his view. He advocates his case well and makes interesting interventions and contributions from that perspective. In the end, we have to choose to disagree with him because we are introducing the scheme.

Lord Thomas of Gresford: Since the noble Lord refers to me specifically, can we agree on something? Can we agree that every change of address or name—for a start—would have to be reported and that every time that happened the person would be liable to be called for an interview and to give further details? Can we agree on that much because then we will have a picture?

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I do not think that we can agree on that. Clearly, an individual would not be called for an interview if they were advancing the information voluntarily. I am sure that they would want to do that. In practical terms, the way in which the scheme would operate will mean that people will be able to inform their local enrolment officers about changes not necessarily by having to appear in person, so I cannot absolutely agree with what the noble Lord said. There are some differences of interpretation here.

I want to try to answer as much as possible the concern that was drawn forth in the contributions from noble Lords and return to where the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, started. He wanted to understand how we saw the scheme working in practice and that was how the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and others came to this.

In general, we are trying to ensure that the scheme, as it operates, will be as convenient as possible for the individual—the point from which the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, started—without compromising the scheme's integrity. Amendments Nos. 105, 152 and 169 would remove the requirement for an individual to,

"attend at a specified time and place",

 
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for enrolments or notification of changes, while Amendment No. 108 would remove the requirement to attend "at a specified time" for enrolment. Such requirements for the purposes of obtaining official documentation are nothing new. For example, birth and death certificates are issued once registered at a registrar's office. Up to now, the UK has been one of the few EU countries that did not require personal attendance to obtain a passport. In the context of the ID card scheme, attendance at an enrolment centre is required to record biometrics and take part in a personal interview. Those are vital elements in preventing fraudulent applications. Indeed, removing them would be very much at odds with next year's introduction of interviews for first-time adult passport applicants by the UK Passport Service as part of its important efforts to strengthen passport security. I am sure that noble Lords will be very much on board with the need to do that, not least because of terrorist threats and the importance to national security of having a more secure passport system—and because of the important improvements to ensure that we have a firm and effective means of controlling immigration, which I believe is an aim that is shared cross-party.

It is our intention to make attendance at a centre as straightforward and convenient as possible. It is envisaged that the appointment booking process will allow individuals to provide preferences with regard to the time and enrolment centre that they wish to attend—so they will have a choice as to the enrolment centre that they attend. There is no intention that the average applicant will be presented with an appointment time as a fait accompli, as has been suggested during this debate. However, it is necessary to ensure that a specific time is agreed so that workflows in enrolment offices can be managed efficiently, and individuals who wish to disrupt the system by repeated failure to attend appointments cannot freely do so. That is why there has to be that civil penalty.

The workflow thing is very important, too. The noble Earl, Lord Onslow, who is not in his place, made a point on the back of an estimate made by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, of how many enrolment centres we might have. He came up with the figure of 70 enrolment centres. That is not a figure that we have published in connection specifically with the development of the scheme, but it is one that I recognise as being attached to the improvements that the Passport Service plans next year with the addition of the interview process. We believe that we can learn from that experience, because it will give us an interesting test of the volumes of work that it is anticipated will follow when the enrolment centres are set up.