Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Maxton

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, at Second Reading of this Bill, I suggested that, while at the moment an identity card would not help to stop fraud on the internet, it will come. There will eventually come a point when, in view of the rising number of people purchasing goods and services online, the banks and the people selling goods will insist that there is some form of identity involved in the transaction. Whether it will be putting a card into your computer or a camera that will show that you actually are the person, I do not know, but I would think the banks in particular will insist on this in the longer run, both for their own hole-in-the-wall cash machines and for buying online. The ID card, as it was originally proposed, if it had been made compulsory from the word go, as I wanted it to be, would have been one of the answers to that and would have saved the private sector very considerable sums of money in the long run.

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, the noble Lord who moved the amendment may be slightly surprised to know that I support it, but for reasons that are rather different from those that he put before the House. A friend of mine described the Bill as the King Canute Bill; in other words, it is doing away with something—identity cards—which, in a relatively short time, whatever Government are in power, will have to be reintroduced. That is almost inevitable. I would hope that an appointed independent person would give that recommendation to the Government of the day and say, “Sorry, we have got it wrong. It is time that we reintroduced ID cards”. I agree entirely with my friend’s view, except that poor old King Canute is the most maligned man in English history, because he never suggested that he could hold back the tide. What he said to his courtiers was, “I cannot hold back the tide”. I suppose that it is the first example of PR going badly wrong.

There will come a point where the need for smart card technology will become such that we will have to introduce an identity cards Bill. This amendment would at least allow an independent person to look at it and say, “Sorry, we’ve got it wrong. Let’s have another look. Let’s introduce ID cards”.

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, if I had got my act together a bit more quickly, I would have added my name to the amendment, because it is very sensible. There are some residual powers in the Bill which we need to keep an eye on. Although an Information Commissioner exists, he does not have the power to march in and look at things unless there are complaints. He would also be overextended.

We need to look out for residual powers that could give rise to concern. They come in Clause 10. Subsections (8) and (9) sensibly state that certain information which is gathered to prove someone’s identity when a passport is being issued should be destroyed after 28 days. Given that the Government will destroy the information within 28 days, I am happy for them to consult other databases—I mentioned in Committee electricity bills, which is probably the quickest way of finding whether someone has changed address or where they really are. I have no problem with the Government doing that to verify a person’s identity for the purpose of producing a passport.

However, then we get to subsection (10), which is the good old catch-all. It says that the Government can retain the information beyond 28 days for the purpose of “preventing or detecting crime”—I remember this sort of wording in RIPA, which led to a lot of grief—and “apprehending and prosecuting offenders”. Well, that depends on how quickly they apprehend them again. We should have oversight by an outside commissioner who reports to Parliament and not by a Home Secretary, because this sort of thing can get out of hand and, later, suddenly rise up to bite a Government in the future. We have several commissioners doing this sort of job elsewhere in the security world. We either add it on to someone’s job or create another one, but it is sensible for protecting the public.