European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords & Report: 1st sitting
Monday 20th January 2020 Lords Chamber

When we first discussed the issue of citizens’ rights in this Chamber, some noble Lords said that there should be complete reciprocity in every detail of how EU states deal with UK citizens. Others of us pointed to the advantage of doing the right thing, which a declaratory system would be. My noble friend’s proposal is the right thing.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, there seems to be a slight pantomime element to this. Many from the3million say, “We need physical proof”; the Government simply reply, “No you don’t”, and so it goes round and round. We are going to have to rebuild relationships with many of these people, who have been bruised by the lack of clarity, by being referred to as “bargaining chips” and by other unkindnesses. My point is simply this: the Government can have their cake and eat it. This is not two parallel systems. You can provide physical evidence which will bear that identity number, which anybody who needs to can be obligated to look up. They are not two systems. I support this amendment.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I have a reservation about this amendment, based on a possible unintended consequence of physical proof of identity. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, mentioned identity cards. It is not impossible that, if there was physical identity documentation in existence, we would get to a situation, whether intended or not, where people would be asked to produce proof in this form. An identity card required of EU citizens but not of UK citizens would come in by the backdoor. That would be a worrying development. It might be a remote possibility, but it is one we should take into account.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I will of course respond to my noble friend, and to other noble Lords who raised that point, but the point I was trying to make is that we have not had a paper part of the licence for some years. Whether it worked for the noble Baroness or not, to hire a car one gets a code from the DVLA. We do not have a paper part of the licence.

[Lord Cromwell]

There appears to be a certain amount of confusion and a lot of people are gesturing to show that they have a plastic card in their hand. I think we have plastic driving licences; we have not done away with them.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

That is not the point that I was making. We used to have paper accompaniments to the licence and we no longer have them. We used to have a paper part of the licence and it was phased out, but to hire a car you need a code.