16:29 - The House divided: - Ayes: 193 / Noes: 311 - Question accordingly negatived.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling).
In Committee and through subsequent correspondence, I have pressed the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), on the consultation that she and her Department undertook when putting the Bill together. However, I have received no answer, so I hope she will tell the House the groups that she consulted, given that the issue did not even feature in the Government’s impact assessment. This House is a tolerant House, and I know that the hon. Lady is a relatively new Minister, but if a mistake has been made, I hope she will have the decency at least to acknowledge that in the House and to apologise to the people affected, who have very little voice. However, there is a vocal group in her Department who have been influential in shaping policy across Whitehall and beyond.
We recognise that the problem is not easy to solve—either here and now on the Floor of the House or more generally—but a small but nevertheless important provision of the Identity Cards Act 2006 was introduced to bring about the existing benefit. We do not necessarily expect a detailed answer from the Minister today, but she has not reassured me, either through correspondence or in Committee, that serious action is under way in government to address the situation. The matter is not so much one for the equalities unit, which she indicated in her last letter was examining the situation, but one for the Identity and Passport Service, which deals with identity issues for the Government as a whole.
We want a real commitment to action today, but all I have heard from the hon. Lady—perhaps she will expand on this during the debate—is the suggestion that the Government are looking to work with international partners to remove gender markers from passports entirely. That proposal could be subject to a huge debate, and I am not sure that we would want that to happen—I think that Government Back Benchers agree. The approach would seem to be a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It would also confuse a lot of people, but even if it was an answer that could be agreed as a way forward, such international negotiations would take a long time, meaning that the proposal is a long-grass solution. We are looking to see a timetable for action and a commitment to action. I once again remind the hon. Lady that she is now a Minister. Whatever her previous record, words are easy. Action may be harder, but action from the Minister is what we are after today.
The Minister for Equalities (Lynne Featherstone)
As Members know from my comments on a similar amendment in Committee, I very much support initiatives that will advance the rights of transgendered people. In Committee I acknowledged the role of the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) in providing a measure in the Identity Cards Act that enabled a transgender person to be issued with two identity cards, one in the gender of birth and another in the gender of their choice.
As hon. Members know, only one of those cards is available for use for travel in Europe. The second card issued in the second identity is available only for use in the UK for identification purposes. The person was required to choose which identity applied to which card at the time of application.
The hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) described to us in detail some of the complex and difficult issues faced by transgender people—I should say people with gender identity issues, because they can be anywhere on the spectrum. It is not simply a case of being one gender or the other. As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch said, the transgendered community can at times be marginalised, difficult to communicate with and difficult to gather together. Her Government’s approach to transgendered people and identity cards did not, however, extend to passports, which it could have done. There was ample opportunity both before and since the identity cards legislation was passed in 2006 for the previous Government to apply the same provisions to passports, but they chose not to do so. There are good reasons for that.
In speaking to the amendment, Opposition Members did not explain why passports did not benefit from the same provisions. I intend to set out briefly some of the issues involved and what we will be doing to seek a consolidated solution on identity and for transgendered people. I will deal in due course with the points raised by the hon. Ladies.
Current passport policy enables a passport to be issued in a person’s acquired gender without a gender recognition certificate, on production of medical evidence indicating that they experience gender dysphoria, or a report to some such effect. A passport in the acquired gender can be a key facilitator in gaining evidence to put before the gender recognition panel to show that a person is living their life in the acquired gender, thus allowing them to get the certificate.
The passport is, of course, an international travel document. It is a good argument that one can get two passports if there is a difficulty with the stamp of a particular country, but there are identity issues associated with passports that are more complex than the same physical image and the same or a similar name appearing. A passport is issued on the basis of nationality and citizenship. It is a secure document that meets strict international standards and enjoys a high international reputation. The standards are agreed and set by the International Civil Aviation Organisation.
We are not aware of any member state that issues two passports on the basis of transgender, and there are a number of reasons why we do not currently envisage the issuing of two passports—I made some inquiries about that possibility—to the same person but in different identities and with different facial images. There are fairly obvious security and immigration control issues arising from a person travelling to a country in one identity and perhaps leaving in another identity. There is also the personal situation for a transgendered person.
I do not know whether hon. Members are aware that following the Committee sitting I wrote about it on my blog. It was clear—[Interruption.] That is often a good way of communicating with the transgendered community.
Meg Hillier
I am amazed that the Minister tells us that she wrote on her blog about the issue, as though that is a formal Government process. I have asked her repeatedly what formal Government consultation took place and her answer is her personal blog. Is this the way the Government intend to continue?
Lynne Featherstone
The hon. Lady is pushing it. That was not an answer to the formal question. I mentioned my blog to illustrate the point that security issues in relation to travel are not the only consideration. There is also the personal situation of a transgendered person. The responses to that blog post indicated, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) identified in Committee, that—
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Lynne Featherstone
No, I will not give way at the moment. I will finish the point I am making. The responses to the blog indicated that transgender people felt that would make them stand out—it would out them.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Unfortunately, the blog is not a document, so that is not the case.
Lynne Featherstone
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will answer the formal question from the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch about consultation. The scrapping of ID cards formed part of the manifesto for the 2010 general election for both the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The policy received considerable media coverage and our opposition to ID cards has been in the public domain from the outset. The coalition agreement clearly sets out our aim to scrap ID cards and to destroy the national identity register. Therefore, although a formal consultation was not undertaken, we have been open and transparent in what we intended to do and what we are doing.
It is clear from the messages—Opposition Members may think a website is not a formal place—from the community that transgendered people do not welcome the state emphasising their individual circumstances. That is why we will be engaging with the transgendered community and others to determine what they consider is the best approach and how we can best achieve a suitable outcome to the issue raised by Opposition Members, which I agree is extremely important—how to deal with the state of not quite being one gender or the other, or in process between the two.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
So what the Minister is telling us is that the Government did not carry out an equality impact assessment, and that the substitute for that is correspondence with individuals on her blog. That takes the place of an impact assessment, which is a legal requirement.
Lynne Featherstone
No, that is not exactly what I said. The impact assessment for the Bill was published on 4 June 2010 and is available on the website of the Identity and Passport Service. The impact assessment indicates that the policy of scrapping ID cards does not have an impact on statutory equality duties.
As the Minister for Immigration indicated in his letter of 19 July to the Chairs of the Committee considering the Bill, the ID card is just one form of identity and although the policy in respect of issuing two cards to a transgendered person may be considered as innovative, scrapping ID cards would not impact on their ability to access services or to travel in their chosen gender. It ill behoves the Opposition to make light of the transgender community communicating through whichever means it wishes.
We need to be careful that in seeking to extend the rights of the transgendered person when travelling, we do not create the potential for additional difficulties. That is why we intend to work with the transgendered community and others on determining what they consider is the best approach and, in conjunction with the Government Equalities Office, consider how we can move this important issue forward. It is important that we listen to those who are most affected. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge mentioned in Committee, a number of his constituents who would be affected and with whom he has had discussions do not favour the approach suggested by the amendment.
At the same time, through the International Civil Aviation Organisation, we will discuss with our international partners the issue of gender recognition in passports. It is possible for a passport to be issued with an X instead of an M for male and F for female. However, we anticipate that the use of an X may raise more questions than answers. Instead, we will consider other options, including whether it might be possible to remove gender identifiers from passports, and look at any potential consequential security implications of this. We aim to consult groups in the UK this autumn and with the ICAO and others over the coming months.
Meg Hillier
I am puzzled that that proposal has come out of leftfield one might say—but perhaps with this coalition, out of rightfield—as a solution. It seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut, and it is a very big proposal to suggest that “male” and “female” be removed from a document that 80% of the British public use.
To return to an earlier point, however, the Minister’s ego is quite extraordinary. Her blog and no official consultation seem to be her answer to things, and I worry about the civil service. There are some excellent civil servants in her Department, as I well know, and they have to act on the basis of two political manifestos and a personal, political blog. Within government, there are statutory and other requirements for consultation, but the Minister has come to the Dispatch Box to explain that this Government do not take them seriously. They prefer party political routes, with all their imperfections, to what one might reasonably expect, which are proper Government routes.
Lynne Featherstone
As I have already explained to the hon. Lady, we are taking formal Government routes, too. Indeed, we will proceed with more formal routes and properly consult a wide range of transgender groups.
The new clause is impractical and fails to recognise its impact on transgendered people. It asks that ID cards that have been issued to transgendered people remain valid until expiry or until another system is in place, but in practice that would mean that only transgendered people would have ID cards. Apart from the huge cost of maintaining the ID infrastructure, whenever that card were used the gender background of the cardholder would be immediately identifiable. Rather than enabling transgendered people to get on with their lives without interference, the proposal would bring them unnecessary and potentially harming attention and focus, and the same problems would arise if transgendered people were issued with a bespoke identification document other than a passport.
This Government are producing the first action plan on transgender equality ever produced by an Administration. Perhaps Opposition Members did not realise the unintended consequences of their new clause, but I recommend that it be withdrawn.
Julie Hilling
I am a new Member, and this is the first time that I have been through this process. However, a Bill has been introduced to get rid of previously enacted legislation that served some members of our community well—a small proportion, but it served them well—and I am deeply shocked that, without any formal consultation or proper discussion with that community, we are now saying that we will get rid of it.
Lynne Featherstone
We have agreed that it is an important issue and I understand that there was only one case of dual issuing—of issuing two identity cards.
Julie Hilling
I was not a Minister and cannot answer that point, but I thought that we were supposed to have impact assessments before we made legislation. The Government are making legislation without them, and I am deeply shocked.
I wish that I were reassured, but I am not sure that I am. I listened to what the Minister said about the need to go forward on the issue and the transgender community being consulted on the solution. I hope that she will undertake that consultation.
Believe me, I recognise that the situation is difficult to resolve. I understand the difficulty of saying, “Let’s not have a gender in the passport” because that would not be a solution; and I understand the difficulty of issuing people two passports. The House should not misunderstand me; I understand that difficulty. However, it is so important for that small group of people that we do not allow our citizens to be humiliated as they go through passport control or people to lose their careers because of the difficulties that they face. On the basis of the Government’s guarantees that they will take the issue forward, take it seriously and work on it, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.
Clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 2
Passport fees for holders of ID cards
(1) This section applies to a person (“P”) who—
(a) held a valid ID card on the day on which this Act was passed, and
(b) paid a fee for the card.
(2) On the first occasion after the passing of this Act on which P applies for a passport, the fee charged for the passport shall be reduced by £30.’.—(Meg Hillier.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Mr MacShane
The Minister is quite right. However, it was my money that paid for my ID card, and the state has no right to confiscate my money. If it took a house or land from me by compulsory purchase, it would have to pay the due sum.
Mr MacShane
I am terribly sorry, but I obtained my ID card and paid my £30. The new Government are rightly seeking to confiscate it, but they owe me modest compensation for doing so. I would never be allowed, under your stern tutelage, Mr Deputy Speaker, to accuse the Ministers of misleading the House or not being straight with us, but may I say that they are being a right pair of tea leaves at the moment? They are going to steal my money and not hand it back. [Interruption.] I mean that they are fond of tea and coffee. A very sound principle of British law is that if the state changes regulations and confiscates an individual’s property that was bought in good faith, forms of compensation are normally paid.
That is not just my view but that of a distinguished Conservative adviser, Lord Levene, who I believe the Prime Minister has hired to advise him on reducing defence expenditure, or perhaps more accurately to achieve smarter procurement in defence, which is his speciality. He wrote a very cross letter to The Times, about which we later had a very nice telephone conversation, in which he said that it was quite preposterous that having bought his identity card in good faith, he should now have it confiscated without any compensation. I bow to Lord Levene as a banker, a man of affairs, a business leader and a distinguished Government adviser, and shelter behind his outrage. Frankly, it does not matter if we are talking about one person or 14 million people. I put it to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire that the Government could do themselves no end of good by accepting the new clause, because 14,000 or 15,000 people, in good faith, took out ID cards—[Interruption.] Sorry, 11,000 people paid money for cards and others got them free. They have used the cards for three months, so compensation could be made pro rata. It would do the Government no harm—they have sent letters to Lord Levene and me, but they will be sending more—to put a little cheque in the post for those people.
Damian Green
The right hon. Gentleman was in danger of coming close to a serious point, and I thought it deserved to be dealt with. I am sure he has read the Bill and the Identity Cards Act 2006 carefully, so he will be aware that the Government of whom he was such a distinguished and eloquent supporter for so many years wrote the legislation so that the ID card, which he says is to be confiscated, is not his property. The ID card has always been the property of the state, so he cannot run the argument that his property will be confiscated.
Mr MacShane
I am grateful for that hair-splitting point. My passport remains the property of the state, but the plain fact is that I and 11,000 others paid £30. That is not a lot of money, but it was paid in good faith. New clause 2, gently and in a friendly way—there will be other opportunities to make similar points—says that there should be polite compensation. That is a long-established principle of British democratic practice. We are talking peanuts, so the Government would do themselves no harm at all if they erred gently on the side of generosity.
Guy Opperman
I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, if I have in any way drawn Members into other areas.
The short answer to the hon. Lady is to ask her this question: if the ID cards satisfaction survey showed that they were so popular, why did so few people sign up? Fewer than 15,000 signed up, and several thousand did not have to pay.
Damian Green
The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) inadvertently misled the House by saying that Liberty is against biometric residence permits. I have Liberty’s briefing for today’s debate. It states that—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I do not think that the permits are part of the debate, and we are being drawn into other areas. I am sure that Mr Opperman would like to continue his speech.
Grahame M. Morris
The scheme is in its infancy and, essentially, it was marketed in only two areas—Manchester and London. It would have been rolled out further and then, presumably, have had much greater appeal. There is an interesting contradiction: the big corporate interests who were involved in this scheme were paid compensation, but no recompense is to be made to ordinary citizens who paid £30 for a card.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) mentioned the £30 figure. It may seem a trifling sum to some Members, but for a great many people, including many of my constituents, it is a considerable amount of money. There has been some discussion of why individuals on low incomes might have chosen to spend such a sum on an ID card, and whether many did so. We must consider the fact that alternative forms of identification are more expensive—for example, a provisional driving licence is an accepted form of ID commonly used by younger people as proof of age and it costs £50. There is a cost reason that led some people voluntarily to choose to buy an ID card, therefore. People on lower incomes who needed to prove their age would naturally be inclined to opt for an ID card, but whether the person who bought the card was on a low income or a millionaire is, in fact, irrelevant because the behaviour of this Government in not addressing the unfairness and injustice contained in the Bill is deplorable.
I cannot see why the cards that have already been issued cannot in some way remain valid until their expiry date. The parties in the coalition Government have only a handful of policies on which they truly agree and I accept that not continuing with the ID card is among them, but not enough care has been given to reimbursing cardholders or to making some attempt to maintain already issued cards, perhaps with some reduced functionality. There remains a database for passports, and this card could perhaps, at least in some way, remain an authenticated identification document. Did the Minister seek any advice on possible functions for the already issued cards, or was he content just to allow them to fall? There seems to me to be no reason why the cards cannot remain valid until the expiry date.
The Government are abandoning ID cards without any concern for the expenditure that has already been incurred by the taxpayer or any consideration for current ID cardholders, and with little thought for the future of British passport security and the use of biometric data. The Minister has had every opportunity to address the issues Opposition Members raised in Committee, and it is a shame that he was unable to work with us, at least to try to improve some aspects of the Bill.
Damian Green
We have heard a festival of synthetic indignation from Labour Members over the past hour or so. We know they do not mean it because they did not even vote against the Bill on Second Reading, so they do not oppose it very hard. They are scratching around to find ways to express some opposition.
As has been amply illustrated by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), there are, however, some glimmers of light in the authoritarian dark that was the Labour Government. One or two of the leadership candidates, including the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), have said the previous Government were wrong about ID cards. The right hon. Gentleman says he thinks his party should move on from that idea. As that has been stated several times during the debate, I feel it is only fair also to record—
Damian Green
I will in a moment, after I have paid tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s colleague, the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who has consistently been against identity cards. As we are mentioning the Labour party leadership candidates who are virtuous in this regard, I should mention her too, because no Labour Member did.
Steve McCabe
I hate to interrupt the Minister when he is in such fine flow, but I just want to suggest to him that he has misunderstood our position. This is not synthetic indignation and nobody on our side is rejecting the Government’s right to abolish ID cards—in fact, a number of us have acknowledged it. We are objecting to the mean-minded attitude that sets out to punish the relatively small number of people who bought ID cards in good faith.
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman made that point, with characteristic eloquence, in his speech, and I will address it shortly. I am pleased to report to the House that, as those who sat through the Committee stage will be aware, the Labour party has come up with no new ideas to defend the ID cards scheme since then; we have heard all these arguments before.
This group of amendments, which groups together all the arguments that the Opposition can make against the Bill, is a series of impractical and expensive suggestions, made, I suspect, with varying degrees of seriousness. If I were to be kinder than I have been up to now, I might say that some of them may excite genuine feelings among Opposition Members, but others have been tabled for the sake of it.
First, I shall deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) and repeated by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) about refunds or passport-related refunds. We debated this extensively in Committee, and I recognise that £30 is a significant sum to many people, particularly those who are struggling economically in these difficult times, when the Government have had to absorb a terrible economic inheritance from their predecessor.
I do not have any data on the socio-economic status of the very small number of people who bought ID cards, nor, as far as I am aware, do any Labour Members. Before anyone stands up to ask me about this, I shall say that I do not propose to waste any public money by undertaking a survey of who they are. There are times when even those in this House need to step back and apply some common sense to the matters before them. I do not think that anyone in really difficult economic and financial circumstances would have thought, “What is the best thing to spend £30 on this week? I know, a very controversial ID card that will enable me to travel to Europe, but not anywhere else in the world. That’s the most important thing to spend my last £30 on.” I do not believe that one person in this country took that decision, and I have heard nothing from those on the Opposition Benches during our discussion of this Bill to convince me that that is any way a realistic proposition.
I further point out to the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who leads for the Labour party on this, that the charging system for ID cards introduced by her Government took no notice of the ability to pay. It set a flat fee, which took no account of whether someone was unemployed, an old-age pensioner or in full-time employment, like the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane). Sadly, he is no longer in his place, but he was asking us whether he should have claimed for his ID card on expenses. I would have thought that, at the time, that would have been a seriously terrible idea.
The only exception made on this flat fee of £30 that these allegedly struggling people were paying was for those who were in employment and working at one of the airports, where the then Government were anxious to foist the scheme on people in its early days. Anyone in that position would have been one of the 3,000 or so who were given a card free of charge. Those 3,000 lucky people—all, by definition in full-time employment—represent almost 20% of those to whom any card was ever issued. Of course, those cards were paid for by the taxpayer, so when one actually looks behind the indignation expressed by Labour Members, one does not find any substantial argument on this, which they have made the main point of their attack on this Bill.
The Government inherited an ID card scheme that has found very little favour with the public. That is a key issue. Many Opposition Members have talked about the costs, and the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) advanced the extraordinary proposition that even though he accepted that the coalition Government had the perfect right to get rid of the ID cards scheme, we should have carried on with it because the longer it went on the further the costs would be spread. That seemed to me an extraordinary attitude to parliamentary democracy. This is a key issue as the taxpayer has already paid £292 million with fewer than 15,000 cards having been issued—20% of them paid for by the taxpayer. So the calculation at the moment is that the cost to the taxpayer so far is about £20,000 per card. If we exclude the cards issued free of charge, it is £25,000 per card. That is by any standards a scandalous waste of public money that lies squarely at the door of Ministers in the previous Government.
The argument has come from the hon. Member for Easington that the scheme would have become self-financing over time. Based on public demand, there is no evidence to support that, particularly when the cost report in 2009, produced by the Labour party when it was in government, showed that a further £835 million was to be spent on ID cards by 2019, either by the taxpayer or by individual citizens having to sign up for those cards.
In the light of those facts and the already excessive spending of taxpayers’ money on an unpopular and deeply intrusive scheme, we have proposed this Bill. That is why we opposed ID cards in opposition and why we have introduced this Bill so quickly. We do not see why the taxpayer should have to pay yet again. During the debate, several of my hon. Friends asked how much the cancellation would cost, and the answer is about £400,000. As I have illustrated, enough has been spent on the scheme and the taxpayer should not face a further bill of the best part of half a million pounds. That is why we have been clear that refunds will not be offered.
Julie Hilling
How much would it cost the taxpayer, though, if people had a £30 credit when they applied for their passports? Why would it be costly?
Damian Green
As a practical point, the vast majority of people who have bought ID cards already have passports, so it would be entirely valueless to them.
There are practical difficulties with the amendment. It would require the keeping of identity card records for many years to come to ensure that only those who were entitled to a refund could apply for one. I shall come on to the point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak about the destruction of data, but we have made it very clear that we will destroy all the data obtained under the ID cards scheme and that we do not wish to retain any data for this reason or for any other.
I observe in the group of amendments that we are discussing that the twin threats are unnecessary data retention and cost to the taxpayer. Those are the two things that Labour Members who proposed the amendments seem to be concerned about. I assume that new clause 4 is intended to be helpful in avoiding the need for an individual to provide further personal information in the event that they should subsequently apply for a passport. The hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) is, I am sure, aware that, as I have just said, the vast majority of ID cardholders are or were passport holders, so the information relevant to a passport application will already be held on passport records.
In any case, the proposed new clause misses the point of the Bill. The Identity Documents Bill is about scrapping the ID card scheme and destroying the national identity register. We are opposed to the register in principle on the grounds that it is a database holding huge amounts of personal and biometric data simply because a person has applied for an identity card. We do not believe that holding the data is either necessary or proportionate for the purpose for which they were obtained. Instead, it represents a significant intrusion by the state into the lives of our citizens. That is why we are looking to destroy all the information recorded on the NIR. Officials are currently finalising work with contractors on how that will be achieved and the Information Commissioner’s Office has been notified of the destruction process.
Keith Vaz
That is very reassuring, but in his mind and that of the Home Secretary is there a time scale by which this should be done? We appreciate that contractors have been instructed, but has the Minister said that the Government would like that done in a certain number of months?
Damian Green
It would be slightly premature for me to give too much detail now because the legislation has not been passed. We have tried to be as clear as possible in saying that we will do it as quickly as possible after the Bill has passed through all its stages, but I do not wish unnecessarily to annoy or provoke the other place by saying anything else.
Steve McCabe
Can the Minister give the House a categorical assurance that all the information will be destroyed within two months of the Act passing?
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman has ingeniously asked the same question as his right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, to which I shall therefore give exactly the same answer, or revert to an old parliamentary phrase and refer him to the answer I gave some moments ago. We are in contact with the Information Commissioner’s Office about the destruction process, as I have said, precisely to ensure transparency and openness about the physical destruction process.
The Chairman of the Committee made the point that I had jokingly suggested that we might have a sort of auto-da-fé of all that unnecessary information. I was only half joking when I said that and, sadly, it is not possible because the information is on various databases, so we are going to have to delete it. To answer the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak’s technical question, that is like any other act of removing information and involves deleting it from the various databases. That is why we are doing it in conjunction with the Information Commissioner. The hon. Gentleman is waving the Bill at me, so I will say that it must be done within two months of Royal Assent. The reason I cannot give the exact answer that the Chairman of the Committee wants is simply that I do not know when Royal Assent will be, but I hope that it is soon. We will then do it as soon as possible within the two months set out in the Bill. I hope that reassures the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. There is a serious point here: if one believes, as we on the Government side do, that this information has been held unnecessarily, it is sensible to get rid of it as soon as possible, and Parliament needs to know about that.
Damian Green
Let me anticipate what the hon. Gentleman is about to ask. It has always been my intention that when that had happened, Parliament would be informed by way of a written ministerial statement about both the process and delivery of destruction. I could not be more open or transparent about this. We will do it within two months and as soon as possible after Royal Assent. When we have done it, I shall produce a written parliamentary statement that will say not only that we have done it but how we have done it. I hope that I have finally satisfied the hon. Gentleman on all those points.
On new clause 4, I suspect that hon. Members may not have considered its cost implications. There are significant costs associated with establishing whether a person wants their record to be retained, what information he or she is content to be transferred, the security and data transfer costs and, finally, future storage costs—particularly if the person does not subsequently apply for a passport. I am afraid that this is another amendment that seems intent on adding again and again to the cost of the ID card scheme. We want to scrap the scheme at minimal cost to the taxpayer. The new clause would not achieve that aim and would not remove the state’s ability to retain data without good reason.
That profligate approach is evidenced in another of the amendments before us, supported by the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South. We covered the issue of the life expectancy of the card during earlier stages of the Bill and indicated then that the cost of implementing that amendment would be between £50 million and £60 million over 10 years.
I note that the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch has not added her name to the provision, despite tabling something similar in Committee. She indicated in Committee that she thought that figure was at the top end of the estimates, but I am not sure of the basis on which she reached that conclusion. The estimate is a reasonable reflection of the exorbitant cost to the taxpayer that would be incurred by providing a service over the next decade for fewer than 15,000 people, almost 3,000 of whom did not pay for their card in the first place. Leaving aside the cost, the proposal would mean retaining the whole national identity register for another decade, which would involve holding the fingerprints of 15,000 innocent people.
Meg Hillier
I wonder whether the Minister is speaking to the right provision because my name is attached to the amendment, as it has always been.
Damian Green
I apologise to the hon. Lady. If she wishes to associate herself with such a ridiculous proposal, I am happy for her to do so.
The proposal would mean that cardholders would run the risk of their card’s usefulness diminishing even further over time because of the very small number in circulation. That would be likely to result in little or no future engagement or investment by travel operators, carriers and other agencies in accepting ID cards. The provision would give cardholders the false hope that their ID card would continue to be useful, if they had found it useful in the past. I recognise that the amendment to retain the national identity register has been tabled as a consequence of the proposal that ID cards should remain extant for 10 years.
The national identity register sits at the heart of our opposition to the whole scheme. We do not believe that it is the role of the state to gather huge amounts of personal and biometric information about its citizens unless there are proportionate and necessary reasons for doing so. Such reasons could involve the prevention and detection of crime, or national security and safety, but part of the underlying problem with the ID card scheme has always been that its purpose was ill defined, with the reason behind its introduction moving over time from dealing with terrorism to accessing local services.
The national identity register is nothing but a database containing data on individuals who have, by choice, applied for an ID card. The holding of such data represents a significant intrusion on the privacy of the individual. Scrapping the scheme and destroying the national identity register are major steps towards returning power to the public and reducing the intrusion of the state. We are opposed to building up banks of data that neither serve a specific purpose nor deliver a specific outcome. The national identity register fails on both counts.
I have dealt in some detail with all the new clauses and amendments tabled by Labour Members. Each of them fails on practicality, and many of them fail because they would create an extra charge on either the public purse directly, or the citizens of this country indirectly. They all fail, however, because behind them lies the desire to intrude far too much on the private lives of people that was at the heart of the previous Labour Government. As a civil libertarian, I genuinely hope that the future Labour party will reject that in its entirety.
Meg Hillier
I was puzzled by the Minister’s speech because it sounded more like a rallying cry to a group of students than an attempt to address the new clauses and amendments. I should say, however, that I have no problem with rallying cries to groups of students in their place. In fact, not long before the election—when the Minister and I sat on opposite sides of the House—we addressed students together, and he announced that a Conservative Government would remove ID cards to an audience of about 25 people.
Let me make it absolutely clear that we tabled new clauses 2 and 4 as alternatives for the Government to consider as we try to find a way of providing some recompense to those members of the public who bought the cards in good faith. We would have preferred to have tabled a measure providing for a refund but, because there is no money resolution attached to the Bill, we could not. With that in mind, we intend to press both new clauses to Divisions, although if the first is agreed to, we will not need a vote on the second.
I need to pick up on a couple of points that the Minister made. We were not suggesting in the amendments—perhaps he should look more closely at them—that we expect the national identity register to continue. They were carefully worded to suggest migration of data to the existing passport database. In fact, the identity register would have been a modern passport database, had the Government had the courage to continue that approach.
New clause 4 is not about being helpful to those who already had passports or wanted a passport. It would allow cards to continue, but would attach them to the existing passport database. Accepting that the Government’s intention is to destroy the national identity register, it sought to find a solution to that. The Minister has not given very good answers about why that could not be done. Had the Government included a money resolution, it would have been possible—instead of sending two letters out to everybody—to provide a refund to those who had paid or those who had applied for a refund, which would not necessarily have been everybody. The Government’s approach is mean-spirited.
The Minister spoke about the state holding huge amounts of information. I hope that his Government still believe that the NHS should hold information on people, that the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency should hold information, and that the passport database should exist. The national identity register was a modernisation of the passport database.
I assure the House and anyone else who may be watching proceedings today that there is nothing synthetic about our indignation. We recognise that both Government parties had clear policies on the issue, and we can do the maths. We know that we have limited options to improve the Bill, and we are trying to make the best of a bad job because the Bill does many things of which we disapprove. New clauses 2 and 4 attempt to provide some recompense to the people affected.
We have heard some disparaging comments. The hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) spoke about politics being tough. It is clear that his Government are saying that it is tough on members of the public who bought a card. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) spoke about the mugs who bought a card. That disparaging attitude may well be reflected in the Lobby, so let us be clear who is on the side of the consumer in this case. It is certainly not the Government.
The Minister used his cod maths when talking about the cost of the identity card scheme. It does not behove a Government Minister to be so flippant and free with figures when he well knows that the cards had to be paid for by fees. As is the case with the first issue of anything, when the first Mini rolled off the production line, it probably cost several million, if not billions of pounds, but for the last Mini, by definition, the cost per item was much lower because many thousand would have been produced. Identity cards had been issued for a few months at the time of the general election, but under Treasury rules they had to be paid for out of fees, just like passports, as the Minister knows. It ill behoves him to take that approach. I wish to divide the House on the new clauses.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Damian Green
I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 9, leave out
‘(with consequential amendments) by this Act’
and insert
‘by this Act (with consequential amendments and, in the case of section 38, also with minor amendments)’.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments 2 to 4.
Damian Green
The amendments address an issue that was much discussed in Committee. They are not central to the Bill itself, but they are an important part of the wider picture. As we have already discussed at all stages, the Bill is about scrapping ID cards, destroying the data held on the national identity register and, as a result, removing the disproportionate hand of the state in the gathering of personal and biometric data for the purpose of issuing an ID card. It removes the ability of the state to require that a cardholder informs the state for the next 10 years of their personal circumstances, and it removes the threat of a heavy fine of up to £1,000 should they fail to do so.
Most of the clauses in the Bill re-enact the parts of the Identity Cards Act 2006 that were useful and proportionate. Clause 10 re-enacts the provisions of section 38 of the 2006 Act, which allows the Secretary of State to require relevant information to be provided to verify information provided in a passport application or to decide whether to withdraw a passport. In this context, “relevant information” includes identity information to confirm that the applicant is a real person and the person whom they claim to be. It enables the Identity and Passport Service to obtain information relevant to the application and considered necessary to conduct an effective interview with first-time applicants. That may include records from the credit reference agency that will show how long the person has lived at an address and at how many addresses they have lived. It would be unlawful and a breach of the Data Protection Act to require information that was not relevant to the passport application.
During the oral evidence sessions in Committee, two pressure groups—Liberty and Justice—supported the provisions in the clause, which is a welcome and envious position for any Government when bringing new legislation before Parliament. However, I indicated in Committee that I would welcome representations from members of the Committee on the scope of clause 10—in particular, on ensuring that information obtained is indeed passport-specific—and on the retention policy on data obtained.
Meg Hillier
In general terms, Her Majesty’s Opposition support the amendments, but I have a number of small points to make and questions to ask of the Minister. I understand his reasons for not publishing the list of organisations that might be referred to. I recognise the valid security reasons for that, but it does rather go against his desire for transparency. I wonder how he will try to square that circle, to ensure that safeguards are in place with respect to which organisations are approached. I am aware that internal audits take place on a routine basis in passport offices up and down our different countries. However, the Minister has made much of the need for transparency and safeguards, and the two do not work well together.
I reserve judgment on the proposal to retain data for 28 days. I recognise that the current practice in the Identity and Passport Service works quite well, and it is interesting that the Government want to put those arrangements on to a statutory footing. It is interesting partly because passports are issued under the royal prerogative, an arrangement that is not on a statutory footing. I also wonder whether such a move might limit any necessary flexibility. What conversations has the Minister had with those who deal with the security of our passports, in particular the excellent team based in the Glasgow passport office, who often put themselves at great risk while investigating and uncovering fraud? I am aware that data relating, in particular, to withdrawn passports can be especially important in uncovering rings of individuals trying to help others fraudulently to obtain passports. Generally, I support the principle of not holding information any longer than is necessary for this purpose, but we need to ensure that the Government are not unnecessarily restricting action on fraud.
In passing, I must also add that the Bill is a lost opportunity to tackle fraud. Had we still been pursuing the inclusion of fingerprints in passports, which the Minister is throwing out under the terms of the Bill, that would have helped to reduce fraud more generally. If the Minister can answer those two points, it would reassure me considerably.
Damian Green
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her questions. As I understand it, in one of them she is suggesting that I am being too transparent, and in the other that I am not being transparent enough. I appreciate the difficulties of opposition, having had 13 years of it, just as she will appreciate some of the pressures on Ministers. She asked me to reveal internal conversations within the Department, particularly with people who are involved with difficult and dangerous anti-fraud operations. She will know as well as I do that it would be hugely inappropriate and unwise for me to answer that question directly.
Meg Hillier
I fully appreciate that, but I did not actually ask the Minister to answer that question directly. I shall take him to be a man of honour and a man of his word if he can tell us that these issues have been fully explored and that he is personally content about them. It is important that the House knows that that is the case, partly because those individuals put themselves in harm’s way when doing their job.
Damian Green
Indeed so. This is not an adversarial climate, but the hon. Lady will know as well as I do that striking a balance between transparency and flexibility on the one hand and security on the other lies at the heart of much of what the Home Office does, and, indeed, of much of what the Bill seeks to do. She and I would probably find ourselves on different points of that particular spectrum, but we both recognise that it is a spectrum within which we both have to operate. I can only say that it would clearly not be appropriate for me to set out for the benefit of potential fraudsters which organisations they would have to satisfy in order to be issued with a passport, so I shall decline the opportunity to talk to her about the individual organisations concerned.
Meg Hillier
If the Minister is not hearing what I am saying, perhaps there is an issue about how he is answering questions generally. I was not asking him to do that, so that is fine; we agree. I simply want to know whether he feels personally reassured that these measures will not detract from the ability of the UK Passport Service to carry out the security checks that normally take place. If that was not clear before, I hope that it is now absolutely clear. I do not think that we are asking for different things; I am just seeking reassurance from the Minister that he has done his job as thoroughly as I expect he has.
Damian Green
Of course the Department that the hon. Lady used to be responsible for would not put the security of our passports at risk.
To answer the hon. Lady’s other point, information relevant to future investigations would be retained under the proposals before us, with the amendments here. I hope that she will agree that that strikes an appropriate balance. Genuine concerns were expressed—not just by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), but by Members of all parties—to the effect that the simple repetition of the original clause might put us at the wrong side on the spectrum between transparency and security. That is why I agreed to put the 28-day provision directly in the Bill. The hon. Lady asked about that, and I see no reason to believe that this will in any way inhibit or impede anti-fraud operations. What the amendments will do by changing the clause is to allow operations to be properly conducted while at the same time reassuring individual applicants that any information they give is not kept for an unnecessarily long period of time. That is what this set of amendments is designed to achieve. I commend the amendments to the House.
Amendment 1 agreed to.
Clause 10
Verification of information
Amendments made: 2, page 5, line 24, leave out subsections (1) to (3) and insert—
‘(1) This section applies where it appears to the Secretary of State that a person within subsection (4) may have information that could be used—
(a) for verifying information provided to the Secretary of State for the purposes of, or in connection with, an application for the issue of a passport, or
(b) for determining whether to withdraw an individual’s passport.
(2) For the purpose of making the verification or determination mentioned in subsection (1)(a) or (b), the Secretary of State may require the person within subsection (4) to provide the Secretary of State with the information by a date specified in the requirement.’.
Amendment 3, page 6, line 2, leave out
‘of relevant information to the Secretary of State’
and insert
‘to the Secretary of State of information that could be used as mentioned in subsection (1)(a) or (b)’.
Amendment 4, page 6, line 16, at end insert—
‘(8A) In a case within subsection (1)(a) where a passport is issued, information provided in accordance with this section must be destroyed no later than 28 days after the passport is issued.
(8B) In a case within subsection (1)(b) where a passport is not withdrawn, information provided in accordance with this section must be destroyed no later than 28 days after the determination is made not to withdraw the passport.
(8C) Subsections (8A) and (8B) do not apply in a case where it appears to the Secretary of State to be desirable to retain the information for the purpose of—
(a) preventing or detecting crime, or
(b) apprehending or prosecuting offenders.’.—(Damian Green.)
Third Reading
Damian Green
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
It is a huge pleasure to move Third Reading. The Bill has now proceeded through the scrutiny stages of this House. I appreciate that this is a short and simple Bill, but it is a genuinely historic one—not only because, as mentioned, it was the first Bill introduced by the coalition Government, but because its content is historic and marks a significant shift in direction in the relationship between the state and the citizen in this country. That in itself represents a significant step forward.
The House has agreed to destroy data held by the state without condition or distinction. Consigning the ID cards scheme and the national identity register to the scrapheap reflects the absolute commitment of the coalition Government to reduce the interference of the state and return power back to the people. I am very proud of what the Bill will achieve and I am encouraged by the support for it in all parts of the House. I emphasise “all parts” because we have had some fairly partisan debates this afternoon, but even Labour Members have admitted that the Conservative party had a clear commitment in its manifesto, as did the Liberal Democrats and the nationalist parties in their manifestos.
Many of us welcome the fact that two fifths of wisdom is beginning to creep into the Labour party in that two of the five leadership candidates have decided that the ID card scheme was a mistake. I fear for those who have expressed such strong support for that scheme; if the wrong Miliband wins, they could be in trouble. I also fear for the peace of the dinner party in that the civil libertarian/authoritarian divide is beginning to open up in the Labour party and has even opened up in the Miliband family. This will be an issue that they will have to resolve in a few weeks’ time.
This Bill has sought to repeal parts of the 2006 Act that dealt with the ID card scheme, but we have been careful—I want to emphasise this—to re-enact the important powers on fraud prevention and detection available to protect the public. There is no reduction in public security as a result of the Bill; rather, it is about seeing an enormous increase in public freedom.
I am grateful to all hon. Members who have taken part in the Bill’s scrutiny. We have taken on board the concerns raised on Second Reading and in Committee on information verification, and we have successfully tabled amendments to strengthen safeguards for the public and raise accountability. We noted the comments made in Committee about transgendered people, and will engage in further work with international colleagues in relation to the points raised about passports.
The Bill should also be seen as part of a wider programme to increase individual freedom. Along with Bills such as the freedom Bill, it will, as I have said, alter the balance irrevocably, giving us more powerful citizens and a less than all-powerful state. That is one of the significant changes for the better that the Government will be able to achieve for the country.
There was a discussion about who was responsible for the ID card scheme: about whether it was a new Labour creation, or, ingeniously, the creation of my noble and learned Friend Lord Howard of Lympne. The truth is that it was neither. We had ID cards in this country during the second world war. They were abolished in the 1950s, to great public acclaim, by a Conservative Government who concentrated, as we have done throughout the decades, on the importance of maintaining the power of the citizen.
In times of crisis, Governments often return to ID card schemes, and it was clearly the view of the last Government that Britain was at war after 9/11, that we were at war with terrorists permanently, and that we therefore needed to be put on a permanent war footing. It is at the heart of the contention of those of us who voted against the original Bill, and campaigned successfully against it—as has now been proved with the passage of this legislation—that we cannot and should not lead our lives as though we are in a state of permanent warfare: that if people’s freedoms are restricted so much in an attempt to defend those freedoms, those who threaten our freedoms have already won.
This is a significant victory for the British people. I pay tribute not only to Members on both sides of the House who have supported the Bill, but to the various pressure groups involved. Liberty and Justice have been mentioned, but I also pay tribute to the NO2ID campaign, which can chalk itself up as one of the most successful pressure groups in history. It was formed less than 10 years ago, and within a decade of its formation it has achieved its principal aim.
No doubt all the pressure groups that I have just praised will spend the next few years complaining that we have not gone far enough in various directions. However, I look forward to constructive discussions with them. The broad conclusion that the country can draw from the passage of the Bill is that the march of freedom is happening again, and the British people are beginning to recover their historic freedoms and gain new freedoms. That is one of the many ways in which this Government will improve the lives of people throughout the country.