Identity Documents Bill

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley]

My Lords, I would like to raise a further issue which relates to the wording of the amendment. It requires the surrender of the ID card for there to be a reimbursement of £30. There may well be a category of person who would like the £30 back and feel entitled in law to get the £30 back but who actually wants to keep their ID card. Of course, there is a further issue here, which may have struck a number of us. With only 12,000 or so cards in circulation, the residual value of the identity card in future might well be a great deal higher than £30. So the question may arise of how many people with an eye to the future would be keen to get that £30 back now but to retain their identity card. Some further examination of these and other issues might be helpful.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I recognise the strength of sentiment expressed on all sides of the House. If the House will permit, I shall explain why I cannot accept the amendment.

The Government set out at an early stage that they would not continue with this legislation and that they would repeal the Bill. That has been the long-standing position of the Government, well known in advance. It is fair to say that the Government made their position known on the fact that the ID cards would no longer have any validity.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Excuse me, but that was the opinion of the Opposition at the time, not of the Government.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The noble Earl is quite right. It has always been the intention, whether in opposition or in government, to scrap the ID cards scheme at the least possible extra cost to the taxpayer. Our primary purpose has been to prevent further expense being incurred when we can avoid it. We have no option but to pay compensation to some contractors because we are tied in by the contracts negotiated by our predecessors. That is a contractual agreement, and we are negotiating at the moment what that final sum should be. We do not agree that there is a contract between the Government and cardholders who received a service, nor do we believe that there is any expropriation of property or rights under it. The cardholders are not card-owners; the noble Lords who said that the card was government property were quite right to say so.

[Lord Maxton]

I hear what the noble Baroness has just said about the card being government property. Is she saying, therefore, that it would be illegal for a person who had that card to use it in any way for identity purposes? In other words, if a young person was asked for ID in a pub who still had their ID card, if they produced their ID card would they be committing an offence by using a government document?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I think not, any more than if one uses a passport for that purpose, which is also a government document. The basis is the same.

[Lord Maxton]

But the passport is being retained. It is still going to be a legal document, whereas presumably the ID card, once it is abolished, ceases to be one.

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[Baroness Neville-Jones]

If it is a valid document, it can be used validly for identity. If it is an invalid or cancelled document, obviously it no longer has any legal status.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Under Clause 6 about the possession of false identity documents, does the ID card once it has been revoked become a false identity document? That was the point that the noble Lord was making. It is government property and it is no longer an identity document, so in using it you are probably using a false identity document.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

You are certainly no longer using a valid identity document. It is not any longer valid in law.

The Identity and Passport Service has estimated that the cost of cancelling the ID cards scheme and the national identity register will be up to £5 million. This includes an estimated figure for compensation to the contractors, which I have just mentioned, destruction costs, staffing and other administrative matters. They are all necessary costs that we cannot avoid in abolishing the scheme. A refund scheme would add 10 per cent to that cost, which we do not consider to be a trivial addition.

Noble Lords have talked about principle. One can look at that in several ways. One of the principles that seems to be on offer this afternoon is that one set of taxpayers should refund another set of taxpayers. This does not seem to be a sensible arrangement. Some say that the sum is only about £400,000—one of the noble Lords mentioned that sum—the inference being that in the grand scheme of things this is entirely insignificant. Certainly, compared with the cost of the ID card scheme that has already been paid out—over £290 million—another half a million pounds might not seem significant. That is not, I am afraid, the attitude that the coalition Government take to public spending. We have demonstrated that we have a commitment to ensuring that unnecessary and unjustifiable expenditure is stopped and that we focus on delivering more for less. We are not therefore in a position to offer this refund.

[Lord Soley]

I am listening with some puzzlement. I am not a lawyer, but the Minister has signed off this Bill as being compatible with the convention on human rights. Yet this identity document is the possession of the Government—it is a government-owned thing—and she is confiscating it without compensation. Would it not be wise to take legal advice as to whether she would face a legal challenge if she went ahead with this?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

As I have just said, we do not believe that we are expropriating anybody of their rights. If this is challenged in the courts we will obviously defend that position.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

May I follow that point? The Minister has made the proposition that there is no right in contract by the cardholders and no expropriation. On the assumption that no advice has been obtained from the law officers on these matters, would it be prudent before the next stage of the Bill to obtain such advice?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I will confirm the advice that I have received.

[Lord Morris of Aberavon]

Is the advice from the law officers?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am not sure that I can confirm that. I will seek to do so before Third Reading.

We should not exaggerate the significance of all this. Much has been made of the elderly and the very young. We have no reliable demographic information at all on who the purchasers were. We know that 3,000 of the 15,000 were given free to airside workers for a particular purpose.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

The noble Baroness is getting into the complexities and numbers of this. Is this not a matter of simple principle, irrespective of numbers? If the noble Baroness buys a good or a service and the merchant or other supplier who sells that to her fails to deliver it, she would feel cheated. If that merchant got away with it, she would feel that that undermined the good faith on which the economy and society depend. Is it not a fact that people have in good faith bought a service for 10 years, and after a matter of months, that service is being unilaterally withdrawn? Are people who have done that not entitled to feel thoroughly cheated? Is this not a disgraceful example for a Government of this country to give?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The point I was answering before noble Lords intervened was the inference somehow that we are inflicting great hardship on cardholders. We do not believe this to be the case.

We do not believe that the statutory basis of the issue of ID cards creates a contract or anything akin to a contract in relations between the Secretary of State and the cardholder. Remedies that would be available in the courts if the contract were governed by the law of contract or consumer legislation—which I think is the point raised by the noble Lord—is not available for identity cards.

One or two noble Lords have raised the issue of compromise and of whether it would be a good idea to have one. Could we not, for instance, set the cost of this against the cost of the next passport or, indeed, use the lifetime for which the present card was available? There are associated problems. I do not want to detain the House extensively on this, but the fact of the matter is that the two databases—that is to say, the identity register and the passport database—are not the same. They contain different information, issued for different purposes; their legislative frameworks for what you pay are also different. We cannot therefore simply transfer the one across from the other.

That construction of two differently governed databases with different information on them was the construction of the legislation put through by our predecessors. Unfortunately, in addition to that we are going to destroy the database. We would otherwise have the continuing cost of maintaining it. That is why it cannot be regarded as a valid document for its lifetime; there is nothing behind it against which anybody needing to check your identity would validly be able so to do. There is a problem in that it simply is not a useful document any longer.

[Lord Deben]

I understand that there may be technical reasons why my proposal does not work, but surely they do not apply to the question of a passport. If you sent your form in, it would be quite clear from all the other documents that that little card was for the same person who sent in the form. You do not have to look it up on the two databases; you just know that that is one of the cases in which they could have £30 off. I do not see that that costs anything at all.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am sorry; I thought that the noble Lord was suggesting that this card should be available for use during its previously indicated lifetime. It is of course a separate issue as to whether you could ask for a refund. There are many problems about the refund issue, one of which is that we would have to verify whether the person presenting a card was actually entitled to that refund, which would mean referring to the database. We would have to notify everybody. The costs involved—

[Lord Filkin]

I will be brief. There are times when we have to look at Civil Service advice, good and honest though it is, and apply a political judgment to it. Sometimes it is clear that, in terms of both the justice of the case and the political risk and pain of humiliation, we have to override Civil Service advice. To avoid further pain and agony to the House and to the Minister, I urge her to withdraw and say that she will look at this again.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

This is the position of the Government, my Lords.

[Lord Higgins]

In answer to an earlier intervention regarding the position of the law officers, my noble friend said that she would look at that and return to it on Third Reading. Since it would be helpful to have the law officers’ advice, which at the moment we do not have, would there not be a strong case for deferring this matter until Third Reading, at which point it would be clear?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I said that I will indeed confirm the advice that we have received on the legal aspects.

I want to make one final point before concluding: I am not sure whether the concern which has been expressed in this House is entirely shared by the public. Much has been made of public attitudes but, against the background of 15,000 cards having been taken out, we in the Government have received a grand total of 297 letters on the subject, of which 122 included complaints about refunds. That is 122 against 15,000. We should bear in mind that that is against the background of sending letters to all individuals who had taken out a card when we came into office, so one cannot say that they were uninformed about what was going to happen—that they would not be receiving a refund, because that is what we told them. That letter is also in the Library. So—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I regret interrupting the Minister again but it really is crucial, if I may say so, for her to draw a distinction between information given to people before they purchased their cards and information given to people after they purchased their cards. Therefore, I hope that she will not lay any stress at all on what she has just said.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I understand that difference. I am saying that all 15,000 cardholders were informed specifically and in terms that these cards would be withdrawn, that they would not be valid thereafter and that there would be no refund. We have had 122 letters of complaint, not necessarily all of them from actual cardholders. I do not think that that indicates a very high level of concern about £30. One has to take into account—

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

The House is listening with some incredulity to the defence the Minister is making of a mere £400,000 recompense. Today, the Chancellor has assured the Irish Government that he will give them £7 billion of support and here we are in the House of Lords talking about recompensing British people £400,000. It is complete and utter nonsense, if I may say so to the noble Baroness. For her own sake and for the sake of the Government, will she not at least say to the movers of this amendment and to the House, “I have listened to what you say, I will take the matter away and reconsider it and we can come back to it at Third Reading”?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, support for the Irish Government, the national interest, the economic prosperity of this country and the welfare of Ireland are quite different matters. I do not think that we can ignore the very low level of public interest in and reaction to the Government’s decision. The House should take note of that. I have tried to deal with compromises. They do not work; otherwise one might be able to do something in that respect.

I ought to deal with the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Brett. I apologise to him that he did not receive an answer earlier. We have not consulted the Government of Gibraltar, who issue their cards in a rather different way. The Identity and Passport Service is not able to answer that question directly. The UKBA is the agency which sees the documents of EU cardholders. We will have to get further information on that point, which I will endeavour to do for the noble Lord.

In light of the views that have been expressed in the House this afternoon, I propose to take this amendment away and consider it.

[The Earl of Erroll]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, will she guarantee to come back with an amendment along the lines of recompensing people? On two occasions the Government have promised to take a proposal of mine away—this Bill has only one more stage—but at Third Reading have weaselled out of it at the last minute. Under the rules governing Third Reading, we are not able to put down anything at that stage to ensure that the Government come back with something, so we need a binding commitment from the Government to come back with an amendment along the lines of this one. If the Government will not give such a commitment, we should not permit the amendment to be withdrawn.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I say to the government Front Bench that we are out of order. It is the job of the Front Bench on the government side to make sure that we keep to order.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

Perhaps I may just say that I have undertaken to take the point away. I have done so in good faith and noble Lords may rely on my good faith.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I say to the Minister that her good faith is not at issue at all. The issue is whether it is possible under the rules of the House to bring back at Third Reading an amendment that has been moved on Report. I would like advice from the Clerk because, with great respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, I do not think that that is within the rubric of the House.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, the amendment is fairly straightforward, and I hope that it will be seen as a much-needed addition to the Bill. Conservative shadow Ministers when in opposition made varying claims about the current cost of the ID card scheme which ranged widely from nearly £1 billion to up to £20 billion. Meanwhile, the National Identity Service cost report of October 2009—the official document laid before Parliament under the terms of the Identity Cards Act 2006—stated that the projected forward cost of providing ID cards for the next 10 years until 2019 was £835 million. Crucially, that figure does not equate to the savings to be made from scrapping the scheme. We know that because we read the impact assessment that accompanies the Bill, which states at the bottom of page 4:

“The October 2009 cost report indicated that cancellation of ID cards would avoid future costs of £835 million up to October 2019. However, these costs are planned to be recovered through future fees to ID card purchases. Therefore, there are no benefits to the taxpayer from Year 3 onwards”.

The tables included in the impact assessment reveal that total savings from scrapping the scheme are £118 million. The total cost of cancelling the ID cards and the NIR are given as £22 million, although the Bill’s Explanatory Notes state the cost to be £55 million. There appears to be a muddle and the Government have been rather misleading to claim the scale of the savings that they have done. A definitive, preferably independently audited cost and saving report would be desirable and it would be appropriate for it to be part of the Bill. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider this matter as sympathetically as she can.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The Government certainly agree that it is important that we are open and transparent about costs and savings. Ministers have set out the level of costs, both in the debate here and in the other place. Clearly, the Opposition do not entirely agree with our figures, but we have set out the costs and savings as we see them and as they are expected to be over the spending period. We also agree that it is important that these are set out in an accountable and auditable form and that is why we are including the costs and savings associated with scrapping the ID card scheme in the annual report and accounts—we have already undertaken to do this—which will be submitted to the House of Commons by the chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service.

Noble Lords will be aware that the annual report and accounts are presented to the House of Commons in accordance with Section 7 of the 2000 Act and they are published by the House of Commons. The accounts are aimed at being published in advance of the Summer Recess. If one looks at the noble Lord’s amendment, one can see that the timings are such that we would be invited to publish the same information twice over a very short time. I do not think that that makes a great deal of sense.

I can confirm to your Lordships that there will be a full and transparent breakdown of the costs and savings related to ID cards in the IPS annual report and accounts for the next year and that these will cover the points raised in the amendment so that there will be complete clarity on the points that noble Lords have raised. Accordingly, I invite the noble Lord to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am grateful to the Minister. She has said that the details that I require will be published and I am very happy to accept that assurance. I beg leave to withdraw.

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[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, I fully understand the sentiment behind this, but I am not sure this is the best way to go. I do not think it is really the Home Office’s forte to produce such a report. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee; there are a lot of lessons to be learnt and a lot of people studying this sort of thing. As for the figures used by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser—and taking the point just made about the banks—that is the whole point. People confuse theft of credit card details with identity theft. Identity theft is when someone’s identity is taken over and used to do many other things, such as entering into contracts, travelling across borders and perpetrating crimes. Nicking a credit card and its details is something completely different. Those provide the huge figures, and the people who can stop that are the banks and the credit card companies by increasing their security. They are always looking at this, and they are trading off between the losses they make on transactions where cards are not present, and the cost of additional security. We are seeing new security measures coming through, but it is not a government job. There is no point at which you would take a national identity card that is not designed for online transactions, and a credit card that at the moment is not designed for them, and hope that one is going to help with the other. Actually, the entire problem about security for the credit card is contained there, and the people know what to do about it. They are getting on with it rather slowly to my mind, but when the fraud figures get big enough they will do something about it. I agree there are lessons to be learnt, but I do not think it is an identity card lesson. There are some other lessons to be learnt, but I think that there are other bodies better qualified to do the job than the Home Office writing expensive reports.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raises two issues. He spoke to the first issue as regards combating identity fraud and the effect of the repeal. He did not really mention the second, which would require us to write reports on the operation of the identity card scheme. I will deal with both those matters because, if the amendment were accepted, they would be obligations on the Government.

I very much support the notion that what we do in government should be evidence-based, but I do not think that trying to draw lessons from a scheme of such narrow scope and numbers, as well as short duration, will help us a great deal in what are, without doubt, serious issues. One can draw a number of lessons about the operation of the scheme itself, but I do not know that they would cast much light of a general kind on how to operate identity schemes in the future. Frankly, the Government’s view is that this is not a worthwhile thing for us to try to do.

We entirely agree that combating fraud is a major issue. There is no argument between us on that. That is precisely why the Home Office is taking it very seriously in conjunction with other departments. The National Fraud Authority and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau have, as I mentioned in Committee, produced a strategic threat assessment of the harm and the impact of identity fraud. I entirely agree with the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, that identity is an issue and we certainly will have to do work on identity authentication. That would have been the case even with the NIR.

These assessments are now being taken as the base for an action plan, which I also mentioned in Committee. I hope that the House will accept that it would not be sensible for us to publish the details of the action plan, which is designed to try to get at the root of those who are engaged in criminal and fraudulent activity. But I can assure the House that we are taking this issue seriously.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

I have listened carefully to what the noble Baroness has said. It worries me that the Home Office seems to be considering another form of identity card. I sincerely hope that we will not have another proposal for a national identity card and register by the back door.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am not quite sure how the noble Lord gained that impression. All I said, I think, was that identity authentication, which is not anything like the identity card, is an issue. If you have a transaction with the bank, it does not know who you are, and you want to know who they are.

[Lord Maxton]

Does the noble Baroness not agree, however, that an identity card would be the easiest way of authenticating identity?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I think that this is a debate perhaps of a more expert kind, but I do not agree that that is the case. I should like to make one other point on combating fraud. We also said in Committee that we would review whether there was overlap or duplication of the offences which are being re-enacted as a result of this Bill with those in the existing Fraud Act 2006. We are looking also at the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 in an exercise to make sure that the legislation is tidy and, if we can, to simplify it. Both on the legislative front and on the question of actual action in government to combat fraud, vigorous action is being taken. I therefore ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I look forward to further debates on those matters. The noble Lord is quite right. I hope that your Lordships' House will have further opportunities to discuss the implications of that, because it is a matter of great concern. There are some international companies that seem to feel that they can do what they like, and there is a need for this to be looked at very carefully. I understand the concerns about Governments amassing data. Equally, I refer the noble Lord to Mr Hodder, who wrote to me before Grand Committee, as an example of a business person who has used his card 30 times in going to the European zone and found it very convenient. For that reason, I do not think that we have heard the last word about the use of such cards.

I hope that the Minister considers taking this matter away. Whatever view noble Lords take of what the last Government did and of the nature of the cards and the information, it is rightly important that the public have confidence that the process used is done properly and well, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said. The BBC carried a very interesting story about some of the techniques that will be used to ensure that the information is appropriately destroyed. I welcome that, but it would be helpful—and it is an important matter of public confidence—to have a proper independent scrutiny of this matter, which is why I very much support the noble Lord in his amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

Two separate issues seem to have been debated under this amendment. The first was whether one needs the extraordinary amount of information that would have been contained on the national identity register as a means of establishing ID cards, and whether that is the kind of thing that we want to see reintroduced, which I certainly do not believe to be the case. The second issue, which is the proper intention of the amendment, is about ensuring that information retained by the Government is properly governed and accountable. On that second point, I share absolutely the preoccupations of those who have proposed the amendment, but I have reservations about the method that they have chosen to achieve the end. In effect, the amendment establishes a new individual—some sort of passport commissioner—who would have the job of overseeing how the data were used and retained by the IPS. That would also be the case in connection with information received by third parties for the validation of passport applications.

In our view, the Information Commissioner has significant powers, and we would regard them as sufficient to examine and consider or scrutinise any of the data processed within the IPS. I think that the noble Lord has had a conversation with the Information Commissioner to that effect. My impression of the Information Commissioner is that he takes a considerable interest in the operation of the Act and has powers to serve the IPS with a notice to allow him, or his staff, to find out whether the IPS is complying with the Data Protection Act, which is the governing Act here. He is able to oblige the IPS to allow him or his staff to enter any premises and to show any of the specified documents or to see any of the information of the specified descriptions that he wishes to inspect.

Those are very considerable powers. I share the preoccupation of the House in ensuring that Government retain information only for the purposes for which it is genuinely needed and they are governed in ways which ensure that that is the case—that it is not used for purposes for which it was not specified and for which the Government are not entitled to use it. It is important for us to ensure that this is the case, and to talk to the Information Commissioner to ensure that he is able and willing to exercise his powers in this way, which I believe to be the case. I ask the noble Lord if on that basis, and with an assurance from the Government that we will take the intent of this amendment seriously, he is willing to withdraw his amendment?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful for what my noble friend the Minister has said. I am happy to withdraw the amendment, but would she keep us informed about the conversations she intends to have with the Information Commissioner? Could she assure us of that?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I am happy to give such an assurance to the House.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

On that basis I am happy to withdraw the amendment.