Lord Phillips of Sudbury: What does the noble Baroness mean at the start of her amendment by,

"apart from the provisions of sections 6 and 7"?

Baroness Turner of Camden: My recollection is that these amendments are specifically directed to certain individuals who would be regarded by the Government as being required to register. People who are not required to register should be allowed to be volunteers.

Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I am grateful to the noble Baroness. I think Clause 6 is wider than she realises. She would not accept it from the purview of her amendment if she realised that that is the clause that would be used by the Government to make the scheme compulsory for the population at large.

I respect the experience that the noble Baroness brings to the Committee. It made me listen to her introduction of the amendment very carefully. It carries a weight which contributions from innocents like me cannot carry. I support what she said.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns: The noble Baroness has done the Committee a service in bringing forward amendments which are in their very nature, as she said, more straightforward than mine. I assumed Amendment No. 138 meant something rather different from that assumed by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I found it to have great resonance with what I am trying to achieve: an honesty whereby Clauses 6 and 7 are the only parts of the Bill which enforce compulsion. I found refuge in Amendment No. 138 in that it appears to require that before Clauses 6 and
 
12 Dec 2005 : Column 1097
 
7 come into effect, the whole process must be truly voluntary in the sense that an individual can opt into the system if he chooses but is not forced to have the document. I found this a very straightforward—I would not call it simple because the noble Baroness is never simple—way of achieving a laudable objective.

I also welcome Amendment No. 161, which will give noble Lords the opportunity to consider, between now and Report, what should be the rights of people to obtain services to which they are freely entitled—by which I mean free at the point of use. What right do they have to continue to have access to those services without having first to apply for an identity card?

These are essential amendments; it is unfortunate that they have been reached at our current state of play but that is the way things happen. I welcome the opportunity to consider these more between now and Report.

Lord Bassam of Brighton: I, too, welcome the amendments although it would be fair to say that we have gone over quite a lot of this ground already. But they introduce one or two novel elements, and it is worth going through them to cover some of the questions they raise.

We are trying to introduce the scheme in a practical way. We want to be thorough about it; we want it to work. Even the scheme's opponents recognise and appreciate that. We have the political authority to do it and we make no bones about that.

The practicalities of introducing an identity card scheme are such that we did not think it right to have a "big bang" approach, as we have said before. That is why it is incremental. Identity cards are issued initially to those who apply for them either as a stand-alone item or linked to the renewal of a passport or other designated document. In this initial phase, no one who refuses to apply for an identity card could be liable for a penalty.

Once we have designated passports under Clause 4 which will require parliamentary approval under the affirmative procedure, anyone applying for renewal of a passport will also be issued with an ID card. By that stage, we will already have biometric passports and the application process will be very similar, if not identical, for the passport and the ID card. Some people may prefer not to use the ID card that is issued to them with the passport and no one will be subject to any penalty if they choose not to apply for or renew a passport.

For those reasons and others, I cannot support Amendment No. 138. It is unnecessary because the only provisions that can be used to compel people to obtain an identity card are those contained in Clauses 6 and 7, as has been said.

Amendment No. 161 is also unnecessary as we already have an adequate safeguard in Clause 18, which is entitled:

"Prohibition on requirements to produce identity cards".

Clause 18 will make it unlawful, in advance of compulsion, for anyone to require an ID card to be produced as proof of identity unless there is also
 
12 Dec 2005 : Column 1098
 
a reasonable alternative method allowed for establishing identity or, in some limited circumstances, where the requirement relates to the provision of a public service which has been linked in regulations to the identity card scheme. This means that if a bank requires proof of identity before someone opens an account, it will be able to ask for an identity card but, in its initial phase, it would have to allow for the option of producing, say, a passport or a photo driving licence as alternative proof of identity.

Of course, it might be said that the safeguard in Clause 18 should continue after compulsion. That would undermine one of the purposes of the scheme, and it is an important one—that once every resident here can be expected to hold an identity card, that should become the gold standard of identification and there should be no bar to using it as such. Clause 18 is there to prevent organisations jumping the gun by insisting on an ID card being produced when only a small proportion of the population have been issued with them.

I understand the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, but the ID card scheme will be rolled out incrementally over a number of years. In the initial phase, it will not be compulsory to hold or use an ID card. The second, compulsory phase will only be introduced some time after the initial roll-out, once a high proportion of the population has already been issued with an identity card. That is our case against these amendments. They are useful to debate and I hope that the noble Baroness, although she disagrees with what we are trying to do, will recognise that the way in which we are doing it is designed to make it work better and that many of the fears about penalties that might be imposed as a product of the roll-out process are not in fact there at present.

Baroness Turner of Camden: I thank my noble friend for that response, but it does not really answer my main concern because it is clear from his response that the Government regard this as a roll-on to compulsion. In other words, the eventual aim is compulsion and the Bill itself is a kind of lead in to compulsion. That is how it seems to me, even from the statement that he has given. What he says about Clause 18 is very useful, but it does not overcome the main objection and the reason for the amendments in the first place. Of course, it is very late at night to have this discussion and I have had to wait a long time to get to this amendment. There is no point in pressing this much harder at the moment, but I am sure that we will return to it. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn

Baroness Anelay of St Johns moved Amendment No. 138A:

Before Clause 8, insert the following new clause—

"PARLIAMENTARY CONTROL OVER STANDARDS AND ADMINISTRATION OF ID CARDS
(1) Parliament shall have the sole power to decide—
(a) whether a voluntary or compulsory ID card scheme shall be introduced in the United Kingdom;
 
12 Dec 2005 : Column 1099
 

(b) who shall be required to possess an ID card, or shall be issued with an ID card, or be entered in the National Identity Register, in the United Kingdom; and
(c) the security standards required in any ID card or National Identity Register in the United Kingdom.
(2) No international body may impose on any United Kingdom citizen the duty to attend or to have attended at any place for the purposes of the issue, or in connection with preparations for the issue, of an ID card and a United Kingdom citizen shall have free passage throughout the United Kingdom and the member states of the European Union without the need to fulfil any such obligation, except as shall have been agreed, or determined, by statute in the United Kingdom.
(3) No Minister of the Crown may enter into any undertaking within the European Union to introduce an ID card scheme or identity register in the United Kingdom, or propose or agree any common standards in relation to such a scheme, unless and until Royal Assent has been given to this Act or any other statute introduced for that specific purpose."

The noble Baroness said: I tabled the amendment in response to an article I saw in the Times on 25 November. I could hardly believe my eyes, but I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me in response that the Times is, most unusually, ill informed.

The article said that the EU could share ID databases. It states that confidential personal information about British citizens could be shared with governments and the police across Europe under proposals put forward at the Commission. I understand that the story arises out of intergovernmental work that is being carried out behind the scenes on EU national identity cards. Is the Prime Minister using the UK presidency to work on agreeing common standards for ID cards? What stage have these negotiations reached? What involvement has there been by the British Parliament? What information has been provided to the British Parliament on these matters? When has any information been made available to the British Parliament? My amendment makes it clear that the UK Parliament should have the sole power to decide: whether we should have any kind of ID card scheme in this country, voluntary or compulsory; who should be required to possess an ID card or be issued with one—which should be subject to decision by this Parliament alone; and that this Parliament alone should decide on the security standards that should underpin a UK system.

The amendment makes it clear that no UK Minister can enter into an undertaking to introduce any ID scheme within the EU or agree to any common standards within the EU until and unless Royal Assent has been given to this Bill. I beg to move.