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Baroness Seccombe: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that useful response and clarification. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord Selsdon moved Amendment No. 52D:
"(2A) Only one ID card may be held by any individual at any one time.
(2B) Any ID card issued to any individual shall be accompanied by a written statement of all the information held on the ID card.
(2C) Each individual in respect of whom an entry on the Register has been made shall be provided with a written copy of all the information held on the Register relating to him."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise with something of a heavy heart. This amendment started its life as a simple apostrophe. I had intended to try to find out whether the Short Title of the Bill was correct. I may feel moved to move an amendment to the Short Title to change it from "Identity Cards Bill" to "Identity Register Bill". In the meantime, in seeking as ever to be brief, I looked at whether an apostrophe might effectively be the best way of drafting this amendment. I wanted to know what would happen if I put an apostrophe in "Cards", either before or after the "s". I sat upstairs with some eminent people in the Public Bills Office, who said that apostrophes were not acceptable, meaning that they are not acceptable for things. We looked at all the Bill titles with apostrophes, and they had to do with people. For example, if I introduced a Bill called "Lord Bassam's Benefits of Brighton and Hove Albion Bill", there could be an apostrophe after "Bassam". It was not otherwise possible, they told me.
While I was there, a noble Lord who I shall not mention came in. I asked whether he was good on English, and he said that he had just become president of the English Speaking Union and felt that he might consult. My question was whether, in "Identity Cards", we are talking of one card or lots of cards. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland of Asthal, will answer this later. When she talked about super-affirmative, I thought that she might be speaking as a form of Mary Poppins: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". Or was she some wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel, or something else? She charmingly fails to tell the whole truth, possibly because she does not know it.
My question is simple. If we ask people whether they would benefit from the right to have an identity card, I am sure that more than 72 per cent would say so. If we ask them whether they want this information on a central registry, 72 per cent would probably say no. The right solution is somewhere between the registry and the benefit of the card. If we have a central register and it provides information from which identity cards are produced, does that mean that each identity card is identical, or does it mean that there is a different identity card for different purposes, as associated with the appropriate document?
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For example, on what I call a national identity card—the biometric card that goes with a passport—there will be certain standard information. Surely that card will not contain all the data about a particular individual from the register but only the same data as is contained on other people's passports. That is an important issue, because if by any chance there is additional data from the register on those cards which is not standard to other people, the sensitivity of the reader is such that other countries may well be able to lift that data. That would not be in our national interests.
How many different types of identity cards will there be? I regard the standard identity card as the one that goes with the biometric passport, which will have certain defined data and is still a voluntary card. It is a card that people may well want.
I should like to correct the remarks of the noble Baroness from the last time I intervened, when she said that I had said that all passports should be issued free. I did not. I said that as the bulk of people who did not have passports were over the age of retirement, it might be a nice gesture—they might not want to travel—if, as they reach a certain mature age, they could have one, or a card, that would be free. Might there not be an identity card, if it is not the one linked to the passport, that has on it your age, entitlement to a pension, or things of that sort? There may be another one associated with your driving licence or, one day, a gun licence. This is where I find it hard to understand where we are coming from or going to.
The amendment should really only have been introducing an apostrophe, and I gather that, if we were all agreed, it could have one. I think it should be called the "Identity Card's Bill". If, however, it is to be the "Identity Cards' Bill", will the noble Baroness tell me where the apostrophe should go?
In the supplementary part of the amendment, I have suggested that anyone who receives an identity card should when he receives it get a nice friendly letter from the Minister responsible, with her email address and direct telephone number, advising them that she is proud enough to have received a gold card or whatever it might be which offers certain privileges, such as the ability to identify yourself in particular situations, and would contain given information. As I asked the noble Baroness the other day, what documentation issued by which government department is proof of identity for which purposes? She sent me a fairly unclear reply, because the matter is not clear. It would therefore be nice if—if we are issuing these identity cards—we removed all these other pieces of paper as proof of identity. That would provide the voluntary encouragement to have one.
Almost daily we receive direct mail offering us all sorts of Switch cards and other cards setting out what information is on that card. Would it not be polite, proper and gentlemanly to write a letter telling the individual what is on the central register, thereby building a relationship where people would have the right to ask whether something might be removed unless it were absolutely essential—such as the wrong
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address or a little slip made by a computer operator or typist which changes the postcode by one digit? That can have a major impact on someone's life.
My position is unchanged. I believe that the ultimate proof of identity is an individual's passport. The introduction of a simple identity card linked to that passport, with all the biometric data on it, is the right way to go. I suggest that that is the only way to go. The second stage—when various government departments feel that it would be helpful to everybody—would be to have an identity card that may be associated with your driving licence and may automatically write to you when you reach the age of 70, requiring you to have a new eye test. Perhaps it could be recorded on it the number of times you have been caught by a speeding camera or all that other data. People would not mind if they knew. If that driving licence/identity card was acceptable, it would be perfect.
On human relations, we should give people the right to approve their photograph on these cards. There may be a different photograph on each. We should also give them the right to add any of the identifying marks that have historically been associated with passports.
This is not a frivolous amendment; it is simply a request for a simple answer. What is the maximum number of different identity cards that we think we will be issuing, and for what purposes? I beg to move.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, can he make one point perfectly clear? Subsection (2B) of his amendment is clear that the statement of information is to be given to the citizen at the time the card is issued. I am not perfectly clear when the information in subsection (2C) is to be given to the citizen. Is it every time that a new entry goes on the register?
Lord Selsdon: My Lords, the noble Lord is very wise, and he should understand that I am not very clear either. But I went upstairs and got help in drafting the provision from the Public Bill Office. I did not think that it was right to suggest that the statement of information should be given every time. I just thought that in the beginning, when the card is issued, the recipient should know what is on the card and in the central register so that he or she could determine the difference between the data.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Selsdon made one point in particular which interested me very much. He suggested that when people get their card, they should have the contents of the card in writing so that they would know exactly what was on it. That seems essential to me.
Somewhere in the Bill it says that what is in the register will be available to people, that they will know what is in the register under their name. When you get a card, you will immediately want to know what it says to people when put into a slot. Will that be available? I think that that is an important point and would give people confidence in the card.
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6.30 pm
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