Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Conor Burns and Alan Johnson

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alan Johnson]

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point; he has a good track record in this area. He is highlighting the real issues of civil liberties, which are not only to do with a simple identity card to prove and protect identity but a whole range of other issues that I shall come to in a moment.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Johnson]

Yes––France.

There was nothing Big Brotherish about the system that we were implementing. We already have the NHS database for those registered with GPs. Incidentally, I note from yesterday’s Independent—I do not know whether it is true, but if we have read it in the papers, it probably is—that the Government have reneged on their pledge to scrap that database. We already have the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency database for those with a driving licence and the passport database with information on 80% of the people in this country—exactly the same information as is on the ID card.

All that we want to do is make it easier for banks, GPs and employers to verify someone’s identity and thereby make it much more difficult for people to create multiple identities and commit identity fraud. That crime costs our economy £1.2 billion every year and has increased by 20% in the first quarter of this year alone. Combating identity fraud protects the security not just of individuals but of all of us collectively. Drug dealers, people traffickers and terrorists depend on access to false documents. Having no simple method of establishing and recording someone’s identity simply plays into their hands, as the police have said in numerous submissions, as the Conservative party stated in its pronouncements before the 2005 election and as the public have said in every consultation held by Governments of both persuasions over the past 14 years. The introduction of ID cards was linked to the switch to biometric passports, with all the costs intertwined. The national identity register is crucial to both, for reasons that I shall explain in a moment.

[Conor Burns]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the scheme would be successful on none of those points unless it were, in time, to move towards being compulsory? People who are going to commit crimes would not participate in a voluntary scheme. During my early years in Northern Ireland, people were compelled to carry photographic driving licences whether they were drivers or not. That fundamentally altered the relationship between the citizen and the state, in a profoundly detrimental way.

[Alan Johnson]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which has rather bedevilled this debate, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden well knows. There was a confusion among the public and politicians about whether the scheme would be compulsory or voluntary, and the whole debate in 2004 and subsequently was about whether future Parliaments would have the opportunity to declare the scheme compulsory. It would have taken a vote of Parliament, but yes, that was implicit in the legislation.

In the debate on 20 December 2004, Charles Clarke, who is sadly no longer in the House, said in his very first address to the House as Home Secretary, “Don’t vote for this Bill if you don’t want to see ID cards become compulsory.” The current Home Secretary voted for the Bill. I can only imagine what she would say if we proposed a compulsory ID cards scheme, having heard her rhetoric about how a voluntary scheme is the end of civilisation. However, she voted for that scheme on the clear statement of the then Home Secretary that Members should vote for it only if they wanted it to become compulsory. I disagree with a compulsory scheme and believe that we can have simple proof and protection of people’s identities without it becoming compulsory.

Second-generation biometric passports, planned to commence in 2012, would provide a crucial additional level of security, enabling verification that the person presenting a passport had the same fingerprints as those encoded on the chip. Amazingly, the Liberal Democrats appear to have convinced the Tories in their political pre-nup to scrap second-generation passports.