Identity Documents Bill

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I congratulate him on his exposition of what happened when this House discussed the Identity Cards Bill and improved it to the extent that it was rather better than it would have been had this House not been involved. Believe me, it would have been a very much worse Bill had this House not given it a lot of attention.

Being brought up in the Labour Party, I had always believed that identity cards were the tools of dictatorships and that the Labour Party, being in favour of individual freedom, was not in favour of such instruments that were used by dictators. I was very disappointed that such a Bill should have been introduced by the Labour Party and I am very disappointed now that it is opposing this Bill to repeal the bad Bill it introduced during 2005-06.

I am very happy to congratulate the coalition on bringing forward so quickly this Bill to repeal the Identity Cards Act. I have looked at many manifestos from both parties in my time and I had got rather cynical about them. I had thought that the coalition was against the Identity Cards Act and I had no doubt that it would be under great pressure from all sorts of interests, such as the security services, the police and the Home Department, not to repeal the Act. It deserves congratulation on being able to stand up to such pressure and, within five months, to bring forward the Bill and to take it through the House of Commons to this House almost unscathed. I therefore straightaway say that I support the Bill.

There is little to criticise in the Bill, although I have heard what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has said about certain aspects of it. No doubt we will come to these matters in Committee. I also hope, like him and others, that the Government will rethink their position on refunding the money to the 15,000 people who were inveigled—if I may use that word—into buying identity cards. It would cost a few hundred thousand pounds to do that, but the noble Baroness has said that we would save £800 million. Perhaps, under those circumstances, the Government will think about this. In any event, I have no doubt that there will be amendments on this matter in Committee. What supervision will there be to ensure that information contained in the National Identity Register is destroyed? It is important that the public, as well as Parliament, are given absolute assurances that the information already held is destroyed.

I understand the position of the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, which has always been his position as I understand it, but I do not understand the position that the Labour Party is adopting now. During his campaign for the leadership, the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Ed Miliband, said that it was a mistake to bring forward the identity card system and the identity register. I cannot understand why the Labour Party is not taking this opportunity to say to the House and to the country, “We were wrong and we support the Government’s Bill to put that wrong right”. I wish it would think about that between now and our further discussions on the Bill.

The Government have made a good start in this Bill to abolish ID cards and the national identity register, but there is much more to do in order to rid ourselves of many of the restraints on individual freedom and restrictions on free speech that have built up over the past few years. It is intolerable that people should be arrested, detained and questioned by the police on the say-so of some third party if they say something out of place to a friend or to someone else—even if the remarks are not relevant to that third party.

Even worse is the risk people run of losing their employment if they dare to criticise public policies or administration. I mention the recent case of a teacher, Miss Birbalsingh, who made a speech at the Tory Party conference properly criticising aspects of education. This should be a wake-up call to all of us, including all the political parties. It appears that when Miss Birbalsingh returned to her school, she was sent home like a naughty little girl and, as I understand it, has now lost her job. We have reached an awful pass when employees can be sacked for bringing legitimate concerns to the attention of the public. I hope that the freedom Bill will contain measures to ensure that this sort of thing does not and will not happen again. The Tory Party in particular, bearing in mind the eloquent speech made by Miss Birbalsingh, really should do something about it.

Finally, I join the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, in thanking the people in Liberty and NO2ID who have been tireless in their effort to keep the issue of ID cards and the national register before the public and have campaigned for the Identity Cards Act to be repealed. It is interesting to note that during the period that these groups have been active, support for ID cards has gone down and down. They used their own money and it is by their efforts that we are now in the last stages of repealing this iniquitous Act. That is a tribute to them and an indication that ordinary people working together in concert can still help to achieve great reform in this country.