Identity Documents Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, I am sure that the House will take note of what has just been said.

Those are the exiguous outputs of the scheme and confirm our long-held concerns that the scheme was expensive, ill thought out and unlikely to find favour with the public. I will return to those aspects and to the issue of passport security later, but I will concentrate for a moment on our fundamental concerns, which lie in the gathering by the state of information that is neither proportionate nor necessary.

The setting up of the national identity register has meant gathering voluminous biographical and biometric personal data on the individual, on the sole criterion of having applied for an identity card. Under the 2006 Act, the individual is required by the state to notify any change in personal details—for instance, a home address—for the lifetime of the card. As things stand, any failure to do so within that period of 10 years could result in the cardholder paying up to £1,000. One has to ask what kind of big brother state that is.

The crux of our deep concern with the ID card scheme is that the purpose of gathering and retaining data was not clear either in the 2006 Act or in how the national identity register operated since its inception. There is the potential for the state to use gathered information for any purpose which it thinks fit. In effect, each cardholder has paid £30 to be photographed, fingerprinted, put on a database and tracked by the state for the following 10 years. Your Lordships may consider this an exaggerated view of the ID card scheme, but sadly it is the reality. We do not always agree with Liberty, but in this instance it is spot on. In its oral evidence in Committee in the other place, the director of Liberty said:

“One of our fundamental concerns about the national identity register was that it was a multi-purpose and non-purpose-specific database, which meant that by definition the amount of information on it would inevitably grow and by definition it was not necessary and proportionate to a particular cause”.

That view was echoed by Justice in the same Committee, and it reflects the importance of ensuring that databases are subject to openness, accountability and proportionality. In our view, the ID card scheme meets none of those key requirements. Instead we have a scheme with little or no purpose that allows the state to intrude into the life of the citizen. There was no attempt in the legislation to achieve the right balance between national security and public protection and the rights to safety and privacy of personal data. The ID cards legislation is a measure without equal in gathering large quantities of personal data from members of the public not suspected of any wrongdoing, which added insult to injury somewhat by requiring them to pay £30 for the privilege.

On cost, the previous Administration expended a total of £251 million. This went on projects to establish identity cards, passports with a second biometric feature and other related programmes. Prior to that, the Home Office spent an additional £41 million developing the policy, legislation and business case for the introduction of identity cards. Furthermore, it was estimated that a further £835 million would have to be spent on the national identity scheme by 2018. This is a huge waste at a time of financial stringency.

When promoting ID cards, the previous Government indicated that the existing and proposed spend was an investment and that the return from ID card sales would recoup taxpayers’ money, but the reality has been different; £251 million to issue 12,000 chargeable cards might be called reckless, which is why we have stopped all spending on the scheme and closed down the existing card-issuing operation, pending the outcome of parliamentary consideration of this Bill. We anticipate savings of £86 million over the next four years through cancellation.

Your Lordships will be aware from consideration of the Bill in the other place that there was a great deal of debate on the issuing of refunds or the provision of discounts or credits against future passport applications. The cost of providing refunds would be in the region of £400,000, which is not a trivial sum. We have come to the conclusion that it would not be right for the taxpayer to foot this bill and to add to the already excessive spending on the scheme.

We realise that some people who spent £30 for a card with a 10-year life expectancy will be disappointed that it will be cancelled later this year without any refund, but those who chose to buy a card did so in the full knowledge of the unambiguous statements by the coalition parties that the scheme would be scrapped if we came to office. They cannot now expect taxpayers to bail them out.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, is the Minister saying that it is a general principle that members of the public are meant to read through the manifestos of all the parties before making a decision, and that that decision is at risk if another party wins? That is an extraordinary argument.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, citizens have to be aware of what is going on around them. It was clear that this scheme would have a risky future ahead of it. I shall deal in a moment with one or two of the other points that were implicit in the noble Lord’s question.

Another idea that was advanced in Committee in the other place was to allow existing cards to remain valid until expiry. That would have required maintaining the infrastructure for the next 10 years or so—another problem. The cost of so doing would have been in the estimated region of between £60 million and £80 million, and we do not consider that spending at that level is justified.

My final point on refunds relates to the statutory basis for the issue of ID cards. There is no contract here; an identity card has been provided in the context of a statutory framework and is not available for the remedies that might be forthcoming where an agreement is governed by contract or consumer law.

The 2006 Act makes no provision for a refund policy, either in the case of early cancellation of the scheme or withdrawal of the card by the issuing authority, or by the individual who simply wishes to get out of the ID card scheme. There has been no provision in the law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am not sure where I would categorise myself in my noble friend’s interesting description of the opposition Front Bench. We have certainly had an interesting debate on the Second Reading of the Bill. As my noble friend Lord Bach said, we recognise that the proposals before us were contained in both the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat manifestos. We certainly do not seek to oppose the Bill. However, as we have heard from this debate on Second Reading, there are several important matters that we will want to scrutinise thoroughly when we move into Committee.

First, I will respond to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, and others, in suggesting that the previous Government’s approach to ID cards indicated what has been described as a cavalier approach to the rights of the citizen. My party well understands the importance of the individual liberty of our citizens. It was the previous Government who signed up to the ECHR. We passed a series of equality Bills which added to the individual rights of our citizens. We brought forward freedom of information and data protection legislation. We were and are committed to the individual rights of our citizens. We also understand the responsibility of government to protect the security of citizens. As my noble friend Lord Bach suggested, we saw ID cards as a potentially valuable contribution to our national security. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, is extremely experienced in these matters. At one time she, too, saw the advantages of ID cards. Will she explain, when she responds, how she thinks the Government can effectively protect identity in today’s circumstances?

I also suggest that several speakers have rather overlooked some of the benefits of the voluntary ID card scheme as a convenient, reasonable and affordable way for citizens to assert their identity, as well as being a lightweight and easy-to-use valid travel document in Europe. I should have thought that that is an answer to the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon—on the practicalities at least, if not on the substantive question that he put to the Minister. I look forward to hearing the response.

My noble friend Lord Maxton clearly described the divide between those who carry ID information and those who do not. I think he was suggesting that the technological gap matches the wealth gap in our nation. It is unfair to scrap the cards immediately with no capacity to offer compensation. A number of noble Lords have referred to that matter, and it was also discussed at length in the debate on the Bill in the other place. On Report, the Minister, Mr Damian Green, said that offering compensation or credit to the value of £30 against the purchase of a new passport would be unfair to taxpayers. One has to set that alongside the answer given by the Home Secretary, Mrs Theresa May, who said:

“People knew well before the election what would happen if a Conservative Government were elected”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/10; col. 346.]

That will not do. Is it really suggested that members of the public should plough through each party’s election manifesto, determine that their investment is at risk if a certain party is elected and estimate which party is likely to be elected? I have the three manifestos with me. I would not describe them as a good read but they are weighty documents. Are we seriously suggesting that members of the public have to plough through them? I do not think so. As someone who has lost a few votes in your Lordships' House, I say to the Minister that if ever an issue united the House against her, I suspect that this is it. I should have thought that this matter warrants further consideration between now and Report.

I ask the Minister to clarify the costs. We are told that £835 million will be saved. However, if you delve into the facts of the case, you discover that this figure arises from a total cost figure and that it was planned to recover the costs through future fees to ID card purchasers. My reading of the documentation is that after year three there will be no benefit to the taxpayer and that the actual savings are far less than £835 million. I ask the noble Baroness to clarify that point further.

I should also like the noble Baroness to reassure me about the destruction of the data on the national identity register. Whatever the debate about that register, the fact is that Mr Damian Green said in the other place that destruction would take place—indeed, I think that the Bill makes it clear—

“within two months of Royal Assent”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/9/10; col. 946.]

I should like to hear from the Minister exactly how that destruction will take place. It is right that the House should have that information. I do not think that the matter is as simple as it might sound. I should also like to know what independent verification there will be so that Parliament can be assured that the data have indeed been destroyed. My understanding is that the identity register is on two separate databases and that each database also contains other information for other purposes which will need to be retained. How the information will be deleted and how this process will interact with other material stored on the relevant databases are points of detail which merit further clarification.

I noted what the noble Baroness had to say regarding biometric passports. She said that the UK’s progress towards biometric passports of a standard comparable to those in the rest of the EU and, increasingly, other countries is clearly in jeopardy. The Government’s decision to scrap the NIR and halt development of the UK passport will surely leave British citizens out of step with much of the rest of the world. Is that the case? What are the implications of that in the longer term? As a result, will it not be harder for British citizens to travel with ease? The British passport is one of the most respected documents in the world. Can the noble Baroness reassure me that this policy will not put that at risk? I thought that my noble friend Lord Maxton spoke eloquently about that issue.

As I and my noble friends Lord Bach and Lord Brett have said, we will not oppose the Bill. However, we will join other noble Lords in carefully scrutinising this legislation, and we will certainly press the case for compensation for current holders.

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, we have had an interesting and wide-ranging debate. My first point is that the various speeches have shown a philosophical divide in the House between those who think that it is a good idea for the state to amass information about citizens and that this is somehow empowering, and those who think that it is a good idea for the state to have as little as is necessary for the discharge of its duties and functions. That is one of the things that divide us regarding the national register and it lies at the heart of the way in which this scheme was constructed.

The Benches opposite challenged me personally on why I had changed my view. I will tell them. My reasons were expressed more eloquently than I can put them by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who raised all the charges that one could about the flaws in the system, and he was right. This national register would have contained up to 50 items about individuals. That is a very large amount of information and would have included ephemeral details such as one’s address. A constant process of change would need to have taken place and there would have been a penalty for failing to provide the information.

Some noble Lords mentioned the view of Microsoft. It was Jerry Fishenden, an expert in this area, who said that bringing together in a single place all this information about the citizens of this country was a great honey pot and that the likelihood of it being invulnerable to attack and hacking was zero. Those were the moments when I began to have very serious doubts about the wisdom of this scheme, and the more I saw of it the less I liked it. It is partly for practical, but also for many philosophical, reasons that I concluded that the scheme was a bad idea.

The history of the way in which the previous Government’s thinking evolved was spelt out by other Members of the House, and I will not go into that again. Various arguments were put forward and eventually the scheme turned from being a good security precaution into being a good entitlement route. Part of the difficulty shown in defending this was the fact that the previous Government had constantly to change their justification for this extremely expensive scheme. I repeat that it is extremely expensive and it is quite right to say that it was to be the only one of its kind. One could have imagined that every time a swipe was made and the register had to incorporate a transaction—because it was going to be used in that fashion—the number of transactions would undoubtedly have crashed the system.

The design had many flaws. It also has limited validity and limited use because, as was rightly pointed out, the area of online fraud and losses, which increasingly is where identity authentication is needed and where fraud is taking place, would not have been helped at all by the existence of this register. So the design did not deal with one of the main areas where identity authentication was needed.

The noble Lord opposite asked how we would deal with identity issues. I entirely take the point that they are very serious and that further work and protection are needed. However, I am quite clear that the national register as it was constructed, with its associated card, was not the route to go down to get that degree of identity assurance.

Some noble Lords also raised the question of whether we would retain any of the technology that has been developed in relation to second-generation passports. As I said, the Government take the view that it is not necessary for the security of the British travel document, which we all agree is of high-quality, that it should incorporate second biometric data. Most Schengen countries are going down the route of asking for fingerprints. We are not going to do that and a large number of other countries are not going to, either. We do not take the view that there will be any barrier to the acceptability of our document. We also believe that other ways of increasing the security of the biometric data such as facial imaging, which we can certainly do at much less cost, are the way to go. Having said that, we will retain the technology in the Identity and Passport Service to ensure that, should we need to use it or should it be useful, we will have it available. However, we do not consider that it is needed as things stand.

Several noble Lords asked about how the destruction of information would be done and whether we could be sure that it would be done. It is a very important issue. As has been said, all biometric data and the vast majority of the personal data will be destroyed within two months of enactment. We have shared our approach with the Information Commissioner's Office, which is satisfied that all areas have been covered. The data destruction will be handled in accordance with the decommissioning guidance issued by the Cabinet Office and by the information assurance arm of GCHQ, the CESG. I believe that I am right in saying also that my honourable friend the Immigration Minister in the other place said that he would report to the House. I, too, am very happy to report to this House on the destruction process. We entirely agree that if we say we are going to do that, the public must be assured that it is happening. That will be a systematic process. We will not allow data that should no longer be legally held to be held by the Government.

Some noble Lords also raised the question of the power under the Act to sell data. Perhaps I may clarify that. Section 12 of the Act provides for the Identity and Passport Service to provide information to third parties for verification purposes. This permits the Secretary of State, under that power, to supply information to a person registered under the Act. The provision of this information requires the consent of the individual: at least that is a relief. For example, they may be applying for goods and services, which is why the information about them is required. Section 35 allows for a fee to be charged for the application of this provision, so one can see the intention potentially to make this a profit-making possibility for the Government. Our anxiety would have been about whether the information being provided was always accurate.

Some noble Lords asked whether there was an anomaly between our desire and intention to abolish the identity cards system and register and our continuation of biometric permits for foreign workers in this country. In fact, the latter is an EU requirement and, obviously, we undertake to continue to maintain our EU obligations. These are residence permits; they are not identity documents.

On costings, I cannot supply an immediate answer to the question raised by the noble Lord opposite. Our figures are very different, but I will write to him on that subject, as I realise that it is important to have clarity.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

The point is that most of the long-term cost would have been met by people paying the cost of the card. It is rather inaccurate to give a globalised figure and to say that that is the total cost.

[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.