Identity Documents Bill

Lord Brett Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I admire the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, for sticking to the old guns, as you might say. It may be worth while in this Second Reading debate reviewing where we have come from because I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, was not accurate in what he said. The principal issue that exercised this House back in 2005-06, to such an extraordinary degree that we threw that Bill back to the Commons three times, was the issue of compulsion. It is wrong of the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to start his speech by saying that the previous Government introduced a Bill for a voluntary card. Indeed they did according to their manifesto, but when the Bill came out it was compulsory. That is the rock upon which the opposition in this House was built and that opposition then grew across all Benches. It is as well to remember that.

I pay tribute to Mr Willcock. I do not suppose that many in the Chamber remember dear old Mr Willcock who, when asked by a policeman in 1952, refused to produce his identity card. He said, “I am not going to produce my identity card. The identity card was to stop the Germans, not to help you on some piffling nonsense”. The High Court upheld the good gentleman’s refusal and the identity card legislation was swiftly repealed. The point of that was to show that identity cards tend to have what you might call usage creep. The state cannot resist the opportunity to use the card for more and more things in more and more situations.

Again, one aspect of the Bill of 2005 that this House objected to profoundly was the right of the Secretary of State to add to the circumstances in which the identity card could be used and, in particular, to add to the category of information that could be on the national identity register. Let us not forget that the national identity register was to be unique in the world in terms of the amount of information that it would collect on each citizen. Microsoft licked its lips and referred to the register as the great honey-pot because it was to be the greatest source of information on earth.

The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, objects to what we are doing now because of the commercialisation that he says afflicts disadvantaged youths who want to establish their identity. I would be totally sympathetic to that if I felt that he was correct. However, he omits to remember not only that the ID cards that the Bill will abolish would have been compulsory if this House had not intervened three times but—this could never have been taken away—the huge cost of the scheme, which the LSE working group established would be more than £20 billion over the first 10 years and which was to be recouped by selling the ID cards to the great retailing outlets. These would have readers which, if you spent more than £15 at XYZ store, would read the purchase into the national identity register. Every time that happened, the store would have paid a small sum of money, and—how many of us remember this?—the national identity register would have recorded every occasion on which the card was used. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, looks quizzical, but I assure him that that is so. That is why people objected to the sort of information build-up to which the card would lead.

[Lord Brett]

We are having a Second Reading debate on a Bill that will repeal an Act. Will the noble Lord say where in the Act the facts that he is putting forward appear? In the Act that was passed in this House and in the other place, there is no reference to that.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

It is a bit much to ask me to refer to a point of detail in the Act. I shall tell the noble Lord afterwards, but he need only read Hansard. I assure him that the Government did not deny that they would pay for a substantial part of the cost by commercial use and that every use of the card would register on the NIR. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will agree with that.

Let me quickly pay tribute to NO2ID and Liberty for the huge help that they gave this House in respect of that Bill. I also repeat what the noble Countess said about Lord Northesk, whom we all miss and who was of great use to the House in the course of the passage of that Bill, as was the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who is not in her place now.

To come to the Bill, those of us who fought and fought the previous Bill welcome this one with huge enthusiasm. I believe that the Identity Cards Act 2006 would have affected fundamentally the relationship between the citizen and the state. It is as well to think of “citizen” rather than “subject”, because in some respects that Act would have had a deleterious effect on that vital relationship. However, I say to my noble friend, who confirmed in opening the debate that there will be no repayment of the £30, that I think that that is a serious mistake. It seems unfair to say that people should have kept an eye on what we do in this House and should have carried in their heads the fact that the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party had made clear statements in the course of that Bill’s passage that they would repeal it if they came to power. Simple fairness should lead Government to repay those sums of £30—whether to old women or to rich hedge fund managers, I do not mind. It is not fair to abolish ID cards and not to repay that money. It is a modest sum in relation to the total costs already incurred.

I am sad that the Bill is as complex as it is. I do not know how many noble Lords have tried to read through the Bill, but it is a nightmare, even for an old lawyer like me. In Committee, I shall table a lot of amendments to attempt to make its provisions clearer. I draw attention to just a couple of clauses. In Clause 4, “Possession of false identity documents etc with improper intention”, the definition of improper intention in the second subsection does not say whether it is exhaustive. In addition, the reference to “false identity documents” is not true to the clause because it covers situations in which the documents are not false. The language of the clause is also extremely complex; I hope that we will be able to simplify it as we go along. Clause 6(1)(a) provides for an offence of possessing without reasonable excuse,

“an identity document that is false”.

That does not seem to be reconcilable with an almost exactly parallel offence in Clause 4(2)(a). I hope that that is not too detailed a point for a Second Reading debate.

Clause 10 desperately needs rewording, because it allows the Secretary of State to require various authorities to provide him or her with what is called “verifying information”. At the end, there is a nasty little subsection that states that the Secretary of State may specify by order,

“any other person … for the purposes of this section”.

That could take us right into the realms of private businesses, and we will need to look at that.

I welcome the Bill with great enthusiasm, as have my noble friend Lady Hamwee and others. I would like to think that, by the time it leaves us, the Bill will be really fit for purpose as well as fit in intent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Brett]

My Lords, I am not sure that I can help either of the previous speakers, but I would give one word of advice to the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon. In seeking the identity of Members of the House, it might be more profitable if he were to ask for given names and not just Christian names.

As has already been accepted by our Front Bench, the manifesto commitments on this issue of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties give them the authority to seek repeal of the previous legislation. I am fascinated by the speed with which it has been dealt; it could be because, so far as I can see, it is about the only item that appears in both manifestos.

In the debate on the gracious Speech, the Minister said:

“This Government have a strap line: freedom, fairness and responsibility. These themes run through the Government’s programme”.—[Official Report, 27/5/10; col. 240.]

I should like to test the question raised by the noble Lords, Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lord Stoddart; namely, is it reasonable, free and fair now to say to people that the ID cards which they have voluntarily acquired and which have been legally provided are now to be abolished without compensation in any form and without continuing to provide the freedom of travel across Europe that was part of the reason that they bought the card in the first place? If it were a major issue of expense, one might say that, in these straitened times, it could not be afforded.

The impact assessment looks at the number of options available. The one which I find most attractive is Option 5, the mandatory return of cards with return of fees. It states that this would be of particular advantage because:

“Under this option, current cardholders would be entitled to reclaim the £30 cost of the ID card by returning it to IPS. The benefits of this over Option 1 include … Reputational benefits for the government, in dealing with people who purchased a now-useless card in good faith”.

Are we saying that the Government’s reputation is not worth, at maximum, £400,000, which would be the cost if everybody sought a refund? The impact assessment points to reduced enforcement costs as compared with other options. It also states that,

“the administrative costs incurred in dealing with claims over and above those incurred in collecting the cards in any case will be negligible, but reductions in risk relating to outstanding cards will also be negligible”.

That adds up to a powerful case for consideration of amendments in Committee, particularly when one takes account of the fact that we are expending some £82 million on a referendum on AV and something like £50 million plus on a proposal, if it becomes law, to elect police commissioners.

So I argue that the Government’s position in respect of refunds is not an issue of freedom—it is denying freedom. The agreements were entered into voluntarily. It has been argued that it was not a contract; I am not sure that that was how people who bought the cards would have seen it. Is it reasonable and, most of all, is it responsible?

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, quoted letters from a couple of people who were unhappy about the ID cards. Both of them talked about compulsion—if I recall them correctly—but the ID card was voluntary. I shall quote from a letter that I received from a couple in July—I am quite happy to provide the Minister with a copy. It states:

“I would like our comments to be taken into account by the committee regarding the use of this card as a TRAVEL DOCUMENT in Europe. We can no longer travel long distances this card is fantastic to use. Convenient to carry and most of all welcomed by customs officers wherever we have travelled. Now we have a travel document for Europe at a reasonable cost why should we have to pay over £70 for a worldwide passport when we cannot travel worldwide? All governments spout about value for money, but when it comes to the citizens of our own Country we are denied value for money ... The country may be in a financial mess, but we bought these cards on the understanding they lasted for 10 years. One of our laws (The Sale of Goods Act) states they need be fit for purpose and be suitable for the life span intended”.

That is a very reasonable case made for why the whole of that group of people should get at least a refund. A more prosaic description says:

“The Coalition Government states 100 days to abolition. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask when he stole money off his victims”.

So there is not a population seething on the streets and waving flags to congratulate the Government on removing ID cards; there are mixed opinions.

I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, speaking from the Cross Benches, because I do not believe that at any stage public support for voluntary ID cards was ever less than a majority of those being polled. That was the case through the piece—and compulsory ID cards got a larger support than that. However, that is not the issue. I see no point in rerunning the Second Reading debate on a previous piece of legislation. I suspect that our memories are all faulty on this occasion. When I spoke earlier about the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, I was referring to what, as the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said, was the outcome of debate in this House and to what became the law, based on assurances given by the Government—I gave them from the Front Bench together with the noble Lord, Lord West—which limited very severely the kind of use to which the voluntary ID card could be put. Therefore, I rest my case on what I asked at the beginning: is it reasonable, free and fair for the Government now to refuse either to refund or to give credit against the cost of a full passport? It may be that the majority of people have full passports, but some have nothing more than the ID card and will now have to go out and buy a passport without even getting the credit for the £30 that they have already spent against the passport that they have to buy.

I hope that the views expressed by myself and from the Liberal Democrat Benches and Cross Benches will have support, because otherwise I think that this is a mean Bill, whatever the justification for the repeal in the first place.

[Lord Selsdon]

I apologise if the noble Lord misunderstood when I said “Christian”. I was referring to people who have been christened. He may want to have a debate later about the Baha’is and Patels and all the other people who have given names, which all appear in different orders. That was the point that I was trying to make.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

The fact is that there is significant sunk investment and there would have been future costs if we had operated the system. Those future costs will now not be incurred.

Here is more precision on the point that the noble Lord has just raised. In October 2009, the cost report provided the figure of £835 million for future investment. Noble Lords will be aware that fewer than 15,000 cards have been issued, which has been against an investment of £292 million. The difficulty is that one cannot be as confident as the noble Lord that the costs would be recouped from fees. Irrespective and independent of the attitude of the Opposition at the time, which I am sure acted as a dampener on the general public’s enthusiasm to purchase a card, it was clear that the public were voting with their feet. A total of 12,000 cards is not a large number of applicants.

[Lord Brett]

The point has been made about the restricted areas—one in Manchester and one in London—but there was also a general inquiry register, to which members of the public from other parts of the country could apply so that they could have access to their cards when the cards became available. That is a rather different issue and a rather different figure.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I hope that the noble Lord will acknowledge that, at the end of the day, this was not going down a bomb.

If the question of refunds is the only complaint that the Opposition can find, that shows that there is not a great deal to object to in the legislation. Several points were raised. I was asked about refunds and whether we could supply discounts against other documents or at least allow the documents to have their full-life validity. As I pointed out, full-life validity would mean keeping the system open, which would probably cost an extra £60 million to £80 million. We simply do not think that that is justified or sensible. Noble Lords have said that this would involve a small sum of money, but we believe that £400,000 can be spent to the benefit of the general public in a rather more useful fashion than on a refund of £30, which is rather less than probably most people pay for a monthly subscription to Sky. We have to have a sense of proportion about this.

One or two noble Lords said that they found the Bill unnecessarily complex. In fact, when one gets into the detail of the Bill, there are quite a large number of complexities to unwind. However, I am happy to talk to them about the issues that they have raised and, if the Bill can be simplified, I shall be most delighted to do so.

A point about fraud was raised. The National Fraud Authority and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau have produced a strategic threat assessment of the harm impact of identity crime—a matter with which I think we in the House are all concerned. It will lead to an action plan, which will be overseen by the Home Office. We have started work on it and the first meetings have begun to take place. I am personally very interested in this subject. The House probably shares the view that identity, and its protection, is something that we have to get right. It relates to issues such as how we combat crime that takes place through cybernetworks, so I do not underestimate the importance of getting this right. As I said earlier, we do not believe that the national register is the way to tackle it. However, we have a great concern about the need to protect victims of crime relating to people’s identities having been swiped.

In conclusion, we believe that the Bill is in the public interest and we are pleased to have brought it forward this soon. We believe it is right to start getting the balance that we think should pertain between the citizen and the state more where we would like to see it, and of course other legislation is coming forward which will swing further in the direction of the liberty of the citizen. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.