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Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, that confirms exactly what I have been saying: that although they are bringing forward a voluntary Bill at this point, the Government believe that it will become compulsory. If the card is compulsory, it will then be compulsory for people to carry the cards around with them and they can be challenged by the police at any point, wherever they may be. The noble Lord on the Front Bench shakes his head, but I fear that that is exactly what will happen.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: My Lords, I hope that we have made it absolutely clear to the House that the two issues are not to be conflated. The Government have underlined the fact that it will not be necessary to carry the identity card. That is made clear from the form this Bill takes.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am glad to have that assurance on the record and I hope it will be repeated many times. As I have said, I support the amendment and will support the subsequent amendment to get rid of Clause 6.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, has the capacity to needle people and
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is always fascinating to listen to. A number of things he has said sound a ring of truth. He has said some things that are disagreeable to some people, but it is nevertheless very important that he has said them.
In comparison to the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, I have only a simple question to put to the Minister. She need not be too agitated. It follows on what was said by the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. Am I right in believing that if the Bill is passed in the form it is in now, if you move house you will have to let the appropriate department know that you have done so? If you do not let the department know, are you then fined £1,000?
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I wonder if I can possibly help the Government. It seems that they have built a high and strong stone wall behind them and that the Pyramus and Thisbe on the Front Bench opposite are feeling embarrassed and so have encouraged their colleagues not to support them in order to get the legislation out of the way quickly. There is a fairly simple solution to all this, one that goes to an amendment I have tabled for consideration later. The passport is actually a voluntary document. According to the Government, biometric passports were to have been introduced in October of last year. With the biometric passport will go the new identity card, which will also be voluntary. Since 80 or 90 per cent of this country's population already have passports and could be issued with the identity cards at a cost of less than £10, it seems logical to encourage as many people as possible to register with the passports authority in order that they may have a simple identity card.
4 pm
As your Lordships will be aware, the main people who do not carry passports are those of retirement age, half of whom do not carry them. Thus it would be a simple matter to issue passports to everyone, possibly free of charge, in the same way as we receive bus passes—which are, of course, a proof of identity. That would be voluntary. A passport is a voluntary document; the fact that you cannot travel without it is an encouragement to have one if you want to travel. But the idea of what should have been called the identity cards register is very worrying, and the Government should think of—I have forgotten the chap—Sisyphus, I think, who rolled his stone up the hill, and then it came rolling down. They may shortly be overwhelmed.
The noble Lord, Lord Swindon, struck a chord with me when he spoke about fascism and those awful phrases you would hear in some parts of Europe, often in German, such as "Papier, bitte", followed by "Papiers nicht in ordnung"—I apologise for using a foreign language—and it struck me that I should ask these countries. I have beside me an Act of Parliament from one of those former fascist countries. It has 46 clauses, not 45, that are designed to protect the individual from exactly the sort of thing we are now trying to introduce. I shall read it rather than say it: it is the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz, the German law that says that the individual is free, the data are his, they
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may not be transferred from one government department to another, and he also has Hoheit, or the intellectual property.
It is strange to me, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Swindon, that after all these years we should be swinging so far backwards and recognising that most of the new members of the EU are longing for the days when they are not required to carry papers with them day and night, and where officials do not have the right to misread papers should it suit them in order to intern someone.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord was referring to remarks made by me.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I know the noble Lord well. I thought I did say the noble Lord, Lord Swindon.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart of Swindon.
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, I am so sorry. Those of us who do not have the "of" after our name get confused. I have always associated the noble Lord with Swindon. I apologise for that.
The point I am making is that it is perfectly easy if we follow the simple route of allowing a voluntary document such as a passport to be used as proof of identity above all else. I do not rest my case entirely on that, because I have an amendment later and I would like to remind the Minister. I am still not sure whether there will be one identity card, and only one, or whether there will be lots of them. That is my fear, and if there are to be lots of cards, every one of them must be voluntary.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I strongly support this important amendment. The debate has ranged widely over the whole issue of compulsion. I have amendments later on that address how the move should be made from the initial period to one of compulsion for all. I shall keep my remarks on that rather more focused matter until I move the amendments to leave out Clauses 6 and 7.
The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, spoke with both passion and, in his own way, compulsion about the problems we face with this Bill, the tension between compulsion and voluntarism, and the whole issue of what we may face if we allow what is a flawed Bill to go ahead with this drafting of Clause 5. We are on Report, so I will not go into the arguments on that. Suffice it to say that I agree entirely with his arguments on that score. Some of my speeches today will be even briefer than usual, as noble Lords can tell by the tone of my voice that the bug that is going round the House has found its way finally to me.
The Government have not persuaded me that their system, which forces us to sign up to a gargantuan register with its intrusive audit trail of recording every
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part of our lives, is the right way forward. That is not the system which the public think is waiting in the wings. As ever, we on this side have no criticism of the Minister. She is a supreme advocate, but she has not been given the right material with which to work in this case. I dare to suggest that even the noble Baroness cannot make a silk purse out of this sow's ear.
My noble friend Lord Waddington talked about creeping compulsion and asked whether it should be a lottery regarding when any individual should be caught in the web. He referred in particular to applying for driving licences. I note that in Committee the Minister said that at the moment the Government have no plans to designate driving licences, but Clause 4 gives them that opportunity. In Committee I asked the Minister whether she would categorically give the assurance that the Government would therefore not seek to overturn the decision of this House in the Road Safety Bill when we removed Clauses 29 and 30, which gave the Government in that Bill the authority to withdraw current driving licences. That could be used to issue driving licences to all and require registration and the issuing of an ID card. If the noble Baroness can give us that assurance today, it would be helpful. I have tabled a later amendment on which I can explore that matter in more detail.
The objective of this group of amendments is admirably simple: to require the Government to keep to their manifesto commitment that they would introduce ID cards,
"including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports".
As we have heard this afternoon, that is not what this Bill does. What it says is that if you apply for a passport, you must apply to go on the national identity register and therefore have an ID card. As noble Lords have asked, what is voluntary about that?
In Committee, the Minister estimated that by the end of the initial period, about 85 per cent of the population would have been forced to have an ID card as a result of applying for passports and going on the register. That is not what any normal person reading the manifesto would have expected. It was put with great clarity in another place by the Minister's honourable friend Mr Neil Gerrard when he moved this amendment. He said:
"Any normal person—by that I mean people outside this place—would interpret that as, 'When I renew my passport, I can choose whether to go on the register and have an ID card'. That is what 'initially voluntary' would mean to anyone who read it".—[Official Report, Commons, 18/10/05; col. 748.]
I entirely agree with him. The amendment would make it possible to be issued with a designated document without being forced to go on the national identity register. The individual would have a real choice, and can choose to go on the register and have an ID card—there is nothing to stop them.
If the Government intended to make it compulsory to have an ID card from the word go when you apply for a passport, they should have said so clearly in the manifesto. But the obfuscation has continued in our debates. In Committee the Minister said:
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"There is no need for any person who does not wish to put his name on the register to so register unless and until it becomes compulsory".—[Official Report, 15/11/05; col. 998.]
I reflected very carefully on what the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, said because a little later, on 12 December, the Minister said:
"They can either apply for a new passport and get an ID card at the same time; or not get a new passport".—[Official Report, 12/12/05; col. 1069.]
The Government's definition of "voluntary" is very different from anything that I have ever come across. It is a case of, "Have an ID card or don't leave the country". That is not right. I support the amendment.
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