Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Main Page: Lord Phillips of Sudbury (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Phillips of Sudbury's debates with the Home Office
Identity Documents Bill
Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I support both the amendments in my noble friend’s name in this group and the related Amendment 4, to which I am one of the signatories. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, for also being a signatory to Amendment 4. On Second Reading, we heard the noble Earl’s views on the sense and convenience of continuing to use ID cards as travel documents in Europe, and he has re-emphasised those points today. We on these Benches share that view and the annoyance and frustration of those cardholders who, under the Bill, would be prevented from continuing to use their cards in this way. The amendments before us would enable existing ID cards to continue to be used as travel documents in Europe.
On Second Reading, having asserted that maintaining full-life validity of the existing ID cards would probably cost an extra £60 million to £80 million, which she considered to be unacceptably high, the Minister inferred that the alternative proposition of a refund of £30 to existing holders of the ID cards was unacceptable not because it was too much but because it was so trifling, since it was,
“rather less than probably most people pay for a monthly subscription to Sky”.—[Official Report, 18/10/2010; col. 742.]
That was an interesting phrase from the Minister, suggesting that Rupert Murdoch and his interests are never far from this Government’s thoughts.
ID cards were sold as documents that, among other things, would be valid as travel documents in Europe for 10 years. Those who bought the cards, planning to rely on them for future travel, will now have to spend additional money on obtaining a passport, or renewing it when it expires. Of the 12,000 to 13,000 individuals who bought ID cards, some did so because they only travel in Europe and never further afield, others because their passports were about to expire. Some bought ID cards because they were far more affordable than a full British passport. All these individuals have a right to feel cheated. They were sold a product—in this case, an identity card and its associated benefits—only to find, not that the terms of use are likely to be changed by the Government, but that the value and purpose of the document will be completely nullified without compensation. On the point of fairness, the Government's stance cannot be right. As the Minister, Mr Damian Green, eloquently put it in his impact assessment, there would be a reputational issue for the Government,
“in dealing with people who purchased a now-useless card in good faith”.
The Government's argument appears to be that because they said prior to the general election that they would scrap the ID card system, everyone should have known that, and it is their own fault if they bought one. However, the individuals concerned bought one from the Government.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. Are we not now getting on to Amendment 3? The noble Lord seems to be talking entirely about compensation.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
In speaking to Amendment 3, I shall speak also to the other amendments in this group, Amendments 8 and 20. We come to a very important matter of principle—the Government’s decision to refuse to compensate cardholders for the scrapping of the scheme. My noble friend Lord Rosser already picked up some of the points when he spoke to the first group of amendments. I ask the Minister what the Government have to say to the thousands of individuals who have spent money buying cards in good faith. These cards were sold on the basis, and the purchasers were given the impression, that they would be valid for a wide range of purposes for 10 years. However, there has been a change of government, a change of policy, and seemingly no care for those left inconvenienced and out of pocket as a result. I wonder what the Government now have to say to those people. Why do the Government seem happy to penalise them?
We have been told that the cost of £360,000 to compensate all those who will be eligible for a refund under the terms of Amendment 3 is too much. However, that is the maximum figure. It is quite plausible that a certain percentage of those eligible to claim will choose not to do so. It would be possible to entertain a time limit, a date after which claims could no longer be made, which might lower the total compensation figure. However, the important factor is that compensation had been offered.
On Second Reading, the Minister said:
“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”—
this is a remarkable statement—
“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”.—[Official Report, 18/10/10; col. 715.]
That is, to say the least, unsympathetic. To rely on the public having an in-depth knowledge of party manifestos or coalition agreements—documents that in most cases were published long after most cardholders had spent £30—is a touch unrealistic. The Government's continued reliance on their insistence that people knew well before the election what would happen if a Conservative Government were elected is an extraordinary decision.
I received an e-mail this morning from Mr Nicholas Hodder, who informed me that, since obtaining his ID card in May this year, he had presented it 30 times in order to enter or leave the Schengen area. I ask the Minister why someone like Mr Hodder, who in good faith purchased the ID card and has used it effectively, should suddenly be told, despite the fact that he bought it for a 10-year period, that it will be taken out of use very shortly and that he is not to receive compensation?
I pray in aid the impact assessment produced by the Minister’s department. The IA looked at five options. Under option 3, the return of cards is not required, but there will be a return of fees to current cardholders. The benefit of that option over the do-nothing option 1 is said to be:
“Reputational benefits for the government, in dealing with people who purchased a now-useless card in good faith”.
Is the Minister not concerned about the reputation of the Government? Does she not see that in not agreeing to refund £30, the Government are developing a new principle, which can only reduce trust in Governments generally? Why is it acceptable to compensate companies for termination of contracts? I refer her to the preferred option of the Government. As far as concerns funding, the cost of £22 million is contained in the summary of policy option 1 in the impact assessment. I will come on to whether it should be policy option 1. Option 1 refers to the costs of,
“termination of contracts with contractors”.
Why is it reasonable to pay the costs of terminating contracts with contractors but not with members of the public?
I refer again to the impact assessment. The preferred policy option—that of cancelling ID cards without refunds and with no requirement to return the cards—states that the £22 million includes the cost of the refund process. Clearly, at one point, the Government considered including refunds in the policy option that was being preferred; but presumably at some point they decided to drop this. None the less, it would appear that the £22 million must include the cost of refunding fees. Perhaps the Minister can clarify this point.
My confusion about the impact assessment of 26 May 2010 is that it refers to five options. Option 1, do nothing. Option 2, scrap ID cards, return of cards not required, no return of fees. Option 3, scrap ID cards, return of cards not required, return fees. Option 4, scrap ID cards, return of cards mandatory, no return of fees. Option 5, scrap ID cards, return of cards mandatory, return fees. On page 1 of the impact assessment, signed by the Minister, Damian Green, on 29 May 2010, it states:
“Option 2 is the preferred option”.
But when I turn to the analysis on page 2, this option is described in the heading as “Policy Option 1”. Can the Minister clarify exactly which option we are talking about?
That brings me to Amendment 8. This is a straightforward and, I believe, much needed addition to the Bill. Conservative Party Ministers, when in opposition, made claims about the current cost of the ID card scheme that ranged wildly from nearly £1 billion to up to £20 billion. However, the national identity service cost report of October 2009 stated that the projected forward cost of providing ID cards until 2019 was £835 million. Crucially, this figure does not equate to the savings to be made from scrapping the scheme. We know this because the impact assessment which accompanies the Bill states at the bottom of page 4 that:
“The October 2009 cost report indicated that cancellation of ID cards would avoid future costs of £835m up to October 2019. However, these costs were planned to have been recovered through future fees to ID card purchases. Therefore, there are no benefits to the taxpayer from Year 3 onwards”.
The tables set out in the impact assessment reveal that total savings from scrapping the scheme are £180 million, and the total cost of cancelling ID cards and the NIR are stated as £22 million.
What is clear from the apparent muddle is that the Government have been using rather dubious figures to claim savings on the scale that they would have liked to see. I believe that a definitive and preferably independent audited costs and savings report is urgently required to clarify this matter for all concerned. It would be useful if it were part of the duty of the Government to provide clarity in this area. Amendment 20 is consequential on Amendment 3. I beg to move.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I have added my name to the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. To be honest, I am disappointed that we have to spend time on this issue. That is because on any normal sense of simple fairness, we would not hesitate to repay the £30 that individual citizens have laid out for one of these cards. I have also to express disappointment at the reasoning advanced for the refusal to do so. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has already gone over this, and indeed it was referred to at length at Second Reading. I cannot resist quoting from the Statement on this made by the Home Secretary in June:
“We made it clear that we were opposed to identity cards … The Liberal Democrat party made it absolutely clear that it was opposed to identity cards. People knew well before the election what would happen if a Conservative Government were elected”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/6/10; col. 346.]
Frankly, it demonstrates an astonishing lack of reality vis-à-vis the great British public to believe that they read party manifestos. If I am allowed to do so, I would like to ask anyone in the Committee to raise their hand if they read all three party manifestos. I think we can say that the noble Lord, Lord Brett, was the sole person to have paid such attention to the detail.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I did, too, but surely the point is that we are not really ordinary people in this context.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
No, but even if we are not, I am still fascinated to know how many of us did. I will be quite frank—I did not even read my own party’s manifesto. It was 115 pages long, for a start. However, even if we assume that people had read the party manifesto and knew that we were committed to a repeal of the scheme, there was nothing in any manifesto about repayment of the fee. Anybody reading it would, I suspect, have assumed that if the Government were going to do that, they would return the £30 that was laid out for the purchase. That is my first point.
Secondly, in the statement of the deputy director of policy of the Identity and Passport Service, which is annexed to the report of the Joint Committee on the Bill—it was a pre-scrutiny report published in the middle of October—it was made clear that, although all cardholders had been warned that the cards would be made null and void by the passage of the Bill, there was no reference to non-repayment of the fee. It is very simple: if you knew about all of this—and the vast majority of the public did not—there was still nothing about repayment of the fee.
Then we come to the argument which is to be found at page 20 of the Joint Committee report:
“Comment has been raised that the absence of a refund provision in the Bill is denying cardholders access to safeguards set out in consumer protection legislation. However, an ID card would not be considered as a consumer good. That is because the issue and the holding of an ID card are not considered to be in the nature of a consumer transaction and a sale of goods”.
That, again, comes from the deputy director of policy at the Identity and Passport Service. That is his view. As a lawyer, I am extremely dubious about the reasoning. It seems to me that there was a sale and purchase of goods; namely, a card. I do not see any reason why this should be taken out of the normal consumer protection legislation. Even if it is, surely it is bizarre for this Government, who are committed to fairness—and I am passionately committed to fairness—to resile from the general standard that prevails by law between consumers and suppliers, between purchasers and sellers, on the basis that there is no strictly narrow legal requirement under legislation to do so. Surely we should be a model and satisfy the spirit of all that consumer protection legislation.
I am sorry to have gone on but it strikes me that this is an own goal. It may be small in financial terms—£360,000 is scarcely a blink of the Treasury eyelid these days—but not in terms of the message that it sends out. I want this coalition Government to walk their talk and to act fair as well as talk fair.
Lord Brett
My previous confession about having read all three manifestos was somewhat of a wasted investment, given that after the weekend following the election, we had a coalition agreement. However, I recognised at Second Reading that one of the few things that appears in both the Liberal Democrat and the Conservative manifestos was the decision to scrap ID cards. I saw in neither manifesto a reference to a refund or non-refund. When I was, briefly, the Minister responsible for the launch of the scheme, I debated this with Mr Huhne of the Liberal Democrats on the radio, and while he talked about scrapping them, he was silent about the travel document. I was asked what would be the advantage of having one of these documents if the scheme were to be scrapped by the incoming party, and I said that at least they would have value for 10 years as a travel document. Mr Huhne chose not to contradict that and he certainly made no reference to refunds.
As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said, it is a question of fairness. In the other place, the Minister of State accepted that there were people who, in these straitened times, would have the hardship of having spent the £30. He did not go on to follow his logic, which is that, if you believe in fairness, you should restore that £30 to the individual.
Leaving aside all aspects of ideology, policy and security, I believe that the reputation of this Government—and the reputation of any democratic Government of this country, irrespective of party—is worth a lot more than £360,000. I hope that the Minister will take that on board.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I appreciate the importance that the noble Lords who have spoken place on the matter of refunds, but it is not at all clear that their anxiety on this matter is widely shared elsewhere. Following Second Reading, I asked the Identity and Passport Service to inquire into exactly how much correspondence it had had about refunds. I would expect that to be the place where letters were sent on that subject. From May to September, it received a total of 297 letters about ID cards, of which 122 included complaints about refunds. We do not know whether all of those 122 letter writers were cardholders, among the 12,000 who have paid for the card, but I do not think that that is a significant indicator of widespread indignation on the part of the public.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Does the Minister agree that in September it was not clear that there would be no refund—no one had told them? Does she further agree that if the service were to write round now to tell everyone that there will be no refunds, the response to that would be likely to be very different?
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, I have just said that this survey of correspondence went on after the statement was made in the summer. These figures apply right up to the end of September. If there had been widespread anxiety about whether people would get their money back, we would have heard more from the holders.
Baroness Neville-Jones
People have been written to. I will come to that in a moment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
With respect, I checked this; they have not yet been written to to say that they will not get refunds.
Baroness Neville-Jones
They have, however, been written to to say that the scheme will be cancelled. The key issue is not that of a refund to the individual but how much the taxpayer is expected to pay to end this wanton scheme. We have already seen that the previous Labour Government spent £292 million on the ID scheme and the associated biometric work. That is a staggering amount for a scheme that was predicted to be self-financing through the fees, and given that only 15,000 cards are in circulation in the first year of issue, 3,000 of which were given away free anyway. The amendment’s effect is that the 12,000 cards should be given away free of charge. We cannot go on spending taxpayers’ money in this fashion, particularly when the public have shown overwhelmingly—there is no ambiguity about this—that they do not want ID cards. At the previous election, they showed their unwillingness—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I will speak to this quite briefly. Clause 3 is about the destruction of information recorded in the national register. It is of paramount importance that that be done without let or hindrance, so that at the end of the destruction process everyone is satisfied that there are no loose ends. This is a probing amendment, because I am not entirely sure that the wording of Clause 3 is comprehensive. Of course, I am not privy to the complex arrangements that are no doubt being considered about how the destruction process will proceed. However, we must be absolutely sure that all the data on the national information register are destroyed, including data that are stored or co-stored elsewhere, because, in the process of unrolling this massive scheme, a great deal of information went out to various contractors.
The amendment would add the words “or under its control” at the end of the sentence:
“The Secretary of State must ensure that all the information recorded in the National Identity Register”.
It is designed to catch any information that derives from the register and exists beyond its boundaries in order to ensure that it is wholly and irretrievably destroyed. I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that such contracts as do exist ensure that the Government can, in pursuance of Clause 3, make sure that any information held elsewhere is destroyed, and that they have the right to check that that is the case. I beg to move.
The Countess of Mar
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, as does the Joint Committee on Human Rights. On page 3 of its summary, the Joint Committee states:
“Clause 3 of the Bill requires the Secretary of State to destroy all information recorded in the NIR within two months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent. We recommend that Clause 3 be amended to ensure that not only information held on the NIR but all other information collected in connection with the NIR be destroyed in line with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, and without delay”.
I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for giving us such a comprehensive description of the process that is now in train, and I am sure that it will reassure a lot of people. I must confess that I did not understand half of it, but when I get around to reading it for the seventh time, I might do so. However, what I could not quite gather from her reply is this. She did not say that she objects to my suggested additional words, and it seems that adding them would do no more than what is being done. Given that it is such an important process, I would have hoped that, on further consideration, the matter could be resolved by agreement before we reach the next stage. On that basis, I thank all those who have taken part in the discussion, particularly the noble Countess, Lady Mar, for repeating an appropriate extract from the response of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am content to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
This group of amendments—Amendments 9, 10 and 11, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, as well as mine—is partly probing and certainly simplifying. When I read Clause 4, I found myself completely baffled by quite a bit of it, especially subsection (3). Being a bit of an old lawyer warhorse, I just kept at it. I read it and reread it and I concluded that anyone suffering from insomnia should put subsection (3) by the side of the bed for 2 o'clock in the morning. If you read subsection (3) six times, I almost guarantee sleep. I shall read it for the sake of Hansard. It states:
“In subsection (2)(b) the reference to P or anyone else does not include, in the case of a document within subsection (1)(c), the individual to whom it relates”.
I may be getting daft—I notice assenting groans from the noble Lord, Lord Bach—but I have tried in these amendments to clarify what that means. I am encouraged to do that because I am following Clause 4(2)(b) in the Identity Cards Act. I suspect that the parliamentary draftsman was trying to make things clearer by pulling out subsection (3) rather than allowing the sense of it to follow on from Clause 4(2)(b).
In Clause 4(2)(a) and (b), we have a definition of what is called improper intention. That definition is, I think—and I have consulted the very helpful Bill team, and they agree—exhaustive of what improper intention is for the purpose of this very important clause. I do not see that paragraphs (a) and (b) are exhaustive of improper intention sufficient to base a prosecution under Clause 4(1). I am anxious that there should not be events of dishonesty around identity documents—the holding of them or whatever else. I do not want there to be loopholes where some clever barrister can say, “This may have been a dishonest act by my client but it is not within Clause 4(2)”.
My Amendment 10 would add a further paragraph which reads as follows:
“the intention of using or allowing or inducing another to use a document for any dishonest purpose”—
for any dishonest purpose. I cannot see why that much broader subsection can be offensive to the purport of the clause. Indeed, it may be argued—the noble Baroness may shortly argue—that my subsection renders superfluous paragraphs (a) and (b). If so, we have knocked out two paragraphs for the sake of one. On my reckoning, that is good going.
In another life, I was for 26 years Jimmy Young's legal eagle, trying to explain to the baffled British public a little bit about the law of our land. If the amendments do anything to make it a bit clearer, I think that that is a job worth doing. I beg to move.
The Earl of Erroll
My Lords, I put my name to these amendments because I, too, had read the clause and got myself into complete confusion, so I thought that anything had to be better. I started trying to unravel this in my mind, and given that this challenge fell on a sleepless night, I thought that it might be quite interesting to try it.
What the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has just said is true. The essence of it all is there is no point in having these laws if you cannot actually catch people. If we leave a loophole here, there is no point to a lot of the Bill. People will possess false identity documents and we will not be able to lock them up or punish them for it, and what is the point of the whole exercise if we cannot? It is critical that we get this clause right.
I read the amendment with interest. I thought that if I put some plain English in, that might help. I worked out that if person P, who is basically the crook, nicks my driving licence, which is covered by the wording Clause 4(1)(c),
“an identity document that relates to someone else”—
in other words, it relates to me—we then have to look at what he uses it for. On the question of “improper intention”, I was interested by the word “establishing”, and I would like an answer about that. Clause 4(2)(a) talks about,
“using the document for establishing personal information”.
Does that mean that, having grabbed my passport or driving licence, person P, in impersonating me, is trying to get information about himself on to the database so that he can establish and build up a false identity on the database that will take over my identity,? In other words, is he changing my address to his own, and things like that? If he sticks to driving licences, that is probably easier in the first instance because the checks are lower.
That is what the word “establishing” could mean, but equally it could be used in the other sense of person P ringing up to check that it is indeed my address. I do not know which way round “establishing” is meant. Is it active or passive? Is the crook pushing or pulling the information? That ambiguity could be dangerous. The word may be meant both ways, but lots of people are allowed to establish my personal details. A policeman, for example, needs to do so when he stops me and finds out whether mine is a genuine address. I do not know which way round the word is meant.
Then we come to the next bit, Clause 4(2)(b), which says that the crook can use the document to try to verify personal information about himself. Why would the crook want to verify personal information about himself? It is not personal information about the crook if he has established a new identity for me; it is actually personal information about a fictional person who appears to have my identity. I can see that we are going to have great fun about what is “personal information” with regard to a stolen identity.
So, we get into the little problem about verifying the personal identity of a person who does not exist, but then we come to Clause 4(3). I rewrote this myself to say that the actions detailed in subsection (2)(b) are not an improper use if my driving licence—the identity document mentioned in subsection (1)(c)—is used by the crook, person P, to verify my personal information, the person to whom it relates. In other words, it says that the crook can use that document to find out information about me. Okay, big deal. I do not see why that is so dodgy. That is the one exception that does not matter one way or the other. If that is not the case, I am not really sure what subsection (3) means and I would love to know, but that, after a lot of tortuous back and forth and rewriting, is what I arrived at.
The only other thing that occurred to me just now about improper intentions is that it is an improper intention,
“to have in P’s possession or under P’s control”.
This is where the matter becomes critical, because I know that the word “possession” has huge implications in law. You are in possession of a car if you have the car keys, from the point of view of drunk driving, whether you have an intention of using those car keys or not. If someone else has your shotgun but does not hold a certificate, and they drive 100 yards to get it back to your house because you have just fallen ill and have to go to hospital, they are in possession of that shotgun at that point without a proper certificate. So, if someone takes your driving licence off you in order to verify something about you, they are in possession of your driving licence at that point. I do not know if there are any issues around that, but as I was reading this I suddenly started thinking, “Hang on, we’ve got possession issues here as well”.
The whole thing is a ghastly muddle, and anything that could be done to sort it out would be better. Hence I back the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, Clause 4(3) excludes the scenario where a person uses another’s card to establish personal information about the other person. It would allow a carer, for example, to assist an elderly relative by using that person’s document to collect a parcel or avail themselves of a service on behalf of that person. In other words, that is a perfectly proper intention—what is intended to be excluded is improper intention. The term “establishing” could have two meanings, as suggested. It could mean proving certain facts, or finding out certain facts.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, the Minister has—I nearly said “dealt manfully”, but that would not be right—dealt with her usual sophisticated aplomb with this impossible matter. One wonders whether, for a provision in a Bill such as this, our methods are adequate. I suspect that if one could have a conversation, one might get further. In moving the amendment, I thought that I made it clear that Amendments 9 and 11 do not alter to the meaning of that provision, but just make clearer—
Baroness Neville-Jones
Indeed—I may not have spoken clearly. I did indeed say—at least I thought that I said—that we are in entire agreement that these two amendments do not change the sense of the provision.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am grateful for that, but I shall still come back to the point. The noble Baroness said that Clause 4 is a re-enactment of the provision in the Identity Cards Act 2006. This part of the clause diverges from the 2006 Act in a seriously unhelpful way. The changes mean that there has been a shift into subsection (3) of the language that is there. The noble Baroness did her best to explain it, but all I can do is to go back to the 2006 Act, which is better and clearer on the point. In withdrawing the amendment, I would ask the noble Baroness if she would think a little more about it before we come to the next stage.
I want to make one other point. The noble Baroness made the important point that my attempt to create in Amendment 10 through proposed new paragraph (c) a catch-all provision in terms of the definition of improper intention was unnecessary. However, she was less than categorical. I would be comforted if she and her advisers would put their thinking caps on and make sure that that is the case. I ask that because I am still worried that paragraphs (a) and (b), which provide the exhaustive definition of improper intention, would not catch circumstances where the Government would wish there to be an offence in terms of the possession of false identity documents. However, as I say, we are all reassured by the review that is to be undertaken in what is a very difficult field.
The Earl of Erroll
It may assist the Committee at the next of the stage of the Bill if I say that subsection (3), which the Government may look at again, is probably otiose. It is only an offence for person P, with improper intention, to have in P’s possession. The defence just stated was “not with improper intention”. A carer trying to collect a parcel has no improper intention. It means that either we have “improper intention” wrong or subsection (3) is otiose. I still believe that this should be taken back so that people can think about it.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
On that basis and with the prospect of some further conversation before Report, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Brett
My Lords, the contribution of the Minister in the previous debate has provided a purpose for putting down this probing amendment and, possibly, a small part of the answer. I do not think that anyone would argue the point that identity fraud is increasing. It is very troublesome for those who are victims of it, as well as for retailers and those in business who are misled into dealing with people who are not the genuine persons with whom they believed that they were dealing. The previous Government believed that the ID card was a valuable tool in that regard.
I was moved to put down this amendment by a case which shows that the identity card has great value; that is, for a person whose identity has been stolen. A colleague of mine moved flats. Someone collected the mail that was delivered later, stole the identity of the person concerned and purchased a cell phone or such like. The case was investigated, which took time and trouble, and it was resolved—except that the person was not caught. Time and again during the next two years, he or she continued to use that identity. On each occasion—whether a retailer or a utility company was involved—my colleague had great trouble going through all the rigmarole of proving her identity by supplying documentation from a number of sources. The identity card would have proved simply who she was for the benefit of anyone involved and for her own peace of mind.
We can argue the degree to which the ID card was of value in fraud detection, but I do not think that we can say that it would not have been of great help in this case of identity fraud. We know that the National Fraud Authority and our national intelligence bodies, under Home Office supervision, are looking at some form of national strategy. I presume—no doubt the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—that that is part of the review of which she spoke. This amendment seeks a commitment from the Government to tackle the growing crime of identity fraud; to evaluate, in the absence of having the identity card, what other measures need to be put in place; to learn the lessons; and to report to Parliament. That would provide, in time, a review that we can meaningfully look at in relation to what we know the identity card could have provided; and, more importantly, in its absence, to the alternatives.
It is always terrible to have your house broken into: you feel violated. It has happened again and again to this individual and it got to the stage where her health was really suffering. If nothing happened this week, her fear was that it would happen the next week. Each time it happened was that much worse. I believe that in this case, an ID card of the kind that we have in law would have helped the victim considerably. More importantly, as the Minister said, the central purpose of the legislation before us is to remove ID cards. I seek the assurances set out in this amendment, if not in the form in which they are written then at least in terms of the spirit and intention behind them.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, Amendment 19 is in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll. The provision is covered by Clauses 22 and 23 of the Identity Cards Act. The only difference is that that constitutes 60 lines of legislation, with 14 subsections, whereas my amendment is infinitely more modest. I would like to think that its modesty and open-textured nature is a plus and not a minus. I well appreciate that the dismantling of the identity card scheme is not the same as its creation. Some may think that this is superfluous and that it is enough to rely on the statements that the Minister has made about what the Government may do. I take a cautious view about that. With issues of citizens’ basic rights, it is incumbent on us as legislators to be cautious. I also have in mind the fact that the noble Baroness is here today but may be gone tomorrow.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Of course, to higher and greater things. It is notorious in our system that Ministers remain in post for less than two years, and that one Minister does not feel bound by the statements of another. If anyone doubts that, I can give them half a dozen chapters and verses now. Therefore, the soft soap, even from the mouth of as distinguished a Minister as the noble Baroness, is not enough where one is dealing with issues of citizens’ basic rights. For this side of the House, and no less for Members opposite, the destruction of the national identity register is a crucial matter. If ever there was a situation where somebody beyond the Minister is needed to give reassurance that what has to be done has been properly done, this is it.
Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause requires the independent person appointed to review the arrangements to make an annual report of his or her findings not just to the Secretary of State but also contemporaneously to Parliament. That ensures that the absence of specifics in the proposed new clause is adequate, because any independent reviewer, because they know that they have to report to Parliament as well as to the Secretary of State, will be on their mettle.
I finish by saying that this deals in the Bill with a number of anxieties expressed by the Joint Committee on Human Rights when it reported in October. For example, it stated that,
“the Government should report to Parliament on the progress towards the destruction of this information and the decommissioning of the NIR”.
It says that “the Government” should report. However, as I have attempted to justify, it should go a step further. The committee made other recommendations, particularly with regard to Clause 10, which entitles the Secretary of State to require verification information from not only a long list of government bodies, but from others; and, in subsection (10), gives discretion to the Secretary of State to disapply subsections (8) and (9). Subsection (8) requires that information in relation to passports should be destroyed no later than 28 days after the passport is issued. Subsection (9) contains another provision related to that. The clause gives discretion to the Secretary of State to disapply those subsections where he or she thinks it is “desirable” for the purposes of preventing or detecting crime and so on. That is fair enough, provided there is an independent reviewer who can look at that and make sure that no slackness has entered the system, and that any use of the discretions in the clause has been sensible and justifiable.
Finally, the Joint Committee expressed concern about the proportionality of some of the rights given to the Secretary of State by the Bill. For those reasons, I commend Amendment 19, and the inclusion of an independent review in the Bill. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester)
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, will forgive me. The Committee is considering Amendment 12, and Amendment 19 is grouped with it. I assume that what the noble Lord is doing is speaking to his amendment, not moving it.
The Earl of Erroll
I thought we had leapt ahead of ourselves for a moment; it was great. I also put my name down to Amendment 19 because it is always important to have independent scrutiny. It makes people feel much happier and much safer. I do not see that in this case it needs to be very expensive; you do not need a huge office, a huge outside body or anything like that. Public confidence can otherwise be destroyed. Sometimes things go wrong, so it feels much happier having external independent scrutiny. We forget that at our peril.
Having someone reporting up the same chain of command to the same boss is never quite the same as getting a report straight out to Parliament. On something like this, which potentially involves civil liberties and citizens’ rights, it is very important to have a direct report to Parliament, which is outside the normal chain of command, just in case. It is not that I mistrust any of the people in the system; they are trying to do a good job under difficult circumstances, particularly as the politics of it are shifting and changing on a monthly basis. There is no bad will on my part. Rather, we should always do this as a matter of principle, and it is dangerous to start not doing it.
Something the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, read out reminded me of the phrase in RIPA,
“for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime”.
That was the general-purpose provision that was slotted into RIPA. We were told that the Act would apply only to serious and organised crime but it ended up with local councils using it for other things. At that point, everyone realised that we had a political problem on our hands because uses can change. There could be similar issues buried within the Bill that I remember noticing when I first went through it but then forgot about.
Baroness Neville-Jones
My Lords, we are discussing two akin but not entirely identical amendments. I shall deal with them separately. The substantive point that is being made concerns the importance of combating fraud and identity fraud. I say straight away to noble Lords that the Government take fraud and identity fraud extremely seriously. The noble Lord opposite quoted something that I said relatively recently in the House. That reflects the Government’s preoccupation with organised crime generally, and particularly with fraud and identity fraud. I assure the Committee that this is being pursued with purposive intent and as speedily as possible. We need to get a good strategy together but we are hoping to publish a cybercrime strategy that goes to the heart of these issues by the end of the year. Therefore, there is no lack of purpose and attention being given to what we entirely agree is a very important issue that poses a growing threat to the prosperity of this country if it is not tackled effectively. Of course, it also has national security implications. I think that the issue which divides us is the question of whether the Bill is the right way to tackle that. I cannot see that what is proposed would greatly add to our knowledge but it would certainly add to complexity and cost.
The purpose of Amendment 12 is to hold the Government to account for something that will no longer exist. It would require resources to be committed to determining, in effect, why ID cards were not successful. However, the offences relating to identity fraud are being re-enacted; we are not letting them drop. The impact of identity fraud will continue to be monitored through the crime statistics. We are pursuing the evil of identity fraud in government policy. We therefore consider that we are on the case, but we are against the setting up of yet a further quango to monitor it. There is nothing between us on the importance of the issue but we do not think that this is the right vehicle with which to pursue it; it would add complexity but not value.
On the other amendment, we are similarly concerned about the implications because again this proposal would add to the bureaucracy on how the Government report on offences within the existing passport process. The proposals would involve the creation of a new post to oversee arrangements for the use and retention of data in connection with passport applications. I have to say that we already have the Office of the Information Commissioner. The IPS, like any other organisation, is required to comply with data protection. It is also required to comply with the provisions of the Bill when it is enacted and is subject to the rigours of government audit procedures. This Government have undertaken to report in detail to Parliament on all the processes.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister’s flow. She has just made an important statement, which is that the Information Commissioner has a duty. The question is whether the duty of the Information Commissioner extends to the Government dismantling the national identity register. If it does, most of my concerns will go away. Can the Minister assure me of that?
Baroness Neville-Jones
The Information Commissioner needs to be satisfied that the destruction process has been proper, thorough and complete. That is why we are in touch with the Information Commissioner. We really do not see the need for yet another layer of oversight that could get in the way of the exercise of his functions. In fact, it would duplicate what he is already charged to do—effectively, I would hope.
I would also say that the Government are committed to transparency in this process. We have nothing to hide and we are absolutely committed to the citizen’s rights in the matter. While I realise that I might not last for ever—the thought of being translated to a higher place is rather worrying—nevertheless, I will say with absolute confidence that this Government, whether I am in your Lordships’ House or not, are committed to ensuring that this process is carried out properly and that there is no doubt about its integrity and thoroughness. I hope that, in the light of my comments, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.