Identity Documentation

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 14th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, on initiating this debate and salute him for his persistence in pursuing the issue. I also thank Mary Santo for her typically helpful and informative Library Note.

My strong support for the introduction and general use of identity cards stems from my time on active service in Northern Ireland when commanding my battalion in west Belfast in 1974 and the Belfast brigade from 1978 to 1980. In 1974, whenever we wanted to prove the identity of someone we had stopped, we had to carry out what was called a P-check, which meant contacting the company base in the area in which the person stopped claimed to live and asking for their identity to be confirmed by checking the P-cards that were held on everyone known in the area. Often, this took some time, and I well remember being increasingly nervous when having to wait for 45 minutes for a check to be carried out in another battalion’s area while standing on a street on which the IRA was very active.

In 1979, it was decided that the whole system should be automated, all the old P-card data being transferred to a computer database. This process proved the inefficiency of the old system, one person being found to have 13 different spellings of his name on 13 different cards. Within days, the operational value of almost instant response had proved the spend-to-save value of the cost of automation.

In 1974, it was almost impossible to persuade members of the public to talk to us, largely because of their resentment of internment without trial, which, fortunately, was ended in 1975. When I returned in 1978, that situation had changed somewhat, with more people being prepared to talk, but the overt presence of armed troops on the streets was an impediment to normality, many people citing frequent P-checking, particularly when newly arrived regiments were getting to know their areas, as a particular irritant. My RUC opposite number often used to say how much easier it would be, for both police and Army, if everyone had to carry an identity card, not least in countering false identity—which sentiment I note with interest quoted in the Library Note as being felt by many policemen today. In consequence, I have always thought that human rights are more likely to be protected than breached by identity cards, because they can be used to prove both who someone is, or is not.

I am not going to go into the technicalities of how this can be done with an identity card, because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, will discuss biometrics, for example. Instead, because time is limited, I want to mention another practical use of identity cards of which I have long been in favour, not least because of its value in countering false identity. Every time someone is received into prison, they are given a new prison number, which is inefficient because it denies automatic access to previous records without a considerable amount of checking and comparing data. After prisoners are released, they have to apply to a jobcentre for any benefits to which they may be entitled, which takes time, during which they have to try to live on their £46 discharge grant.

When I inspected the prisons in the UAE for an extradition case, I found that prisoners were given identity cards, using the same number as their national identity card, which they could then use for many purposes such as access to medical provision, use of the library, or to record canteen purchases. But staff told me of the immense value of no longer having to carry out much time-consuming bureaucracy. How much simpler it would be on our prisons if an identity card number could also be used as a prison number, an NHS number and a national insurance number, all of which is perfectly possible given the power of current computer systems. Not only would this make life easier for the overstretched staffs of our overcrowded prisons but it would enable automatic access to medical records and transfer of records of treatment during imprisonment. A prisoner’s entitlement to benefits could be processed in prison, obviating avoidable temptation to reoffend in order to survive.

I dispute the Government’s continual refusal to consider the introduction of identity cards—largely, it would appear, on grounds of cost. I invite the Minister to consider that, from the point of view of many public servants, their introduction would be a spend-to-save measure.