Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Nick de Bois and Michael Ellis

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on the distinction and honour that the House has seen fit to give you. It is a signal honour and I am absolutely convinced that you will perform your functions accordingly.

I thank those who have made their maiden speeches today, and must say how impressed I have been with them. Having given mine only a couple of days ago, I all too well recall the nerves in doing so. I also congratulate the Home Secretary on introducing the Bill, on the honour of her appointment and on the appointment of the Home Office team. This Bill is signally important because it will repair some of the damage that the Labour party has done to our civil liberties. On the liberty of the individual, Winston Churchill once said that those who ignore history—those with short memories—will be condemned to repeat it. Thanks to 13 years of Labour Government, since 1997 no fewer than 404 acts or forms of behaviour have become unlawful. Human rights have been damaged by 13 years of Labour. It may have introduced an Act calling itself the Human Rights Act, but it has damaged human rights in this country. People do not feel as secure or as safe as they have done historically. That is the responsibility of Labour following its governance of this country.

When identity cards were introduced in 1918, they were a knee-jerk reaction; the country was deeply concerned with the war situation. The Government recognised that they needed to be removed as soon as the situation improved. Identity cards were reintroduced in 1939. The mistake was that, after the war ended in 1945, identity cards were allowed to continue apace. That resulted—the case has already been alluded to in the Chamber—in a famous episode where a man in the street, when challenged by a police constable, refused to show his identification papers. He is recorded as having said to the constable, “No, I am a liberal.” What he was indicating was the illiberality of having to show, on the demand of a constable in uniform, identification papers just on mere suspicion. I am given to understand that the grandson of that man is now one of my hon. Friends newly elected to this Chamber, and that is a signal distinction. That incident led to a case that has been alluded to, which went before the High Court of Justice, where the matter was explored in some detail and the public were, of course, outraged. That led, under Churchill’s Government, to the abolition of identification cards, and rightly so.

Criminals today—and, I am sure, historically as well—do not apply for identification cards if they are voluntary. The previous Labour Government said they wanted a voluntary scheme of identification cards, but the reality is that a voluntary scheme would simply mean that the criminals and those disinclined to follow the law would not apply for them, yet those inclined to follow the law would feel increasingly obliged to carry them. It is what is referred to in the military as mission creep, and elsewhere as function creep. I understand that one of the methods by which the previous Labour Government were going to introduce those identification cards was via airports and airlines. They were going to have airside workers carrying these cards first. Trade unions and airlines expressed concern that this voluntary scheme would become impractical and that it would eventually be required to be compulsory.

As we have seen, that has happened in many historical cases, such as with the discontinuance of the use of cheques. They have not been banned, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to use a cheque, and there is pressure to discontinue them entirely. On Sunday trading, too, it has been said that, although Parliament as then assembled was careful not to make the new law compulsory, the safeguards have been eroded, so that those employees who would otherwise have chosen not to work on a Sunday have felt increasingly obliged to do so, whether or not that is a legal requirement. There is every indication that if identification cards had come into existence there would have been exactly that kind of mission creep, or function creep. Some people might have found it increasingly difficult to go into work, especially in certain lines of work, if they did not have a card.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in essence, he is explaining that the last Government were working on the shameful premise of, “If you’ve got nothing to hide, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have one”? That alone is a reason why their measure must be killed off tonight.

[Michael Ellis]

Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. We heard from another of my hon. Friends about how a constituent of his working in the port at Dover was already feeling under pressure to acquire one of these identification cards. There is every reason to believe that that attitude would have become extremely damaging in the longer term. Criminals, however, would have ignored all of this.

The card’s security measures are not impregnable either. In recent years, I have prosecuted a number of criminal cases in the Crown courts in England involving the fraudulent misuse of identification documents, usually passports. Passports are now quite sophisticated documents, but even all the sophisticated apparatus designed to protect their integrity can be circumvented without particularly highly specialist care. That is because it is often the naked eye that is used to determine the veracity or otherwise of a document. Many court cases have resulted from such situations.

There is no substance to the Labour argument. We have now a kind of Big Brother watch in this country, and Labour’s attitude that one is guilty until proven innocent has paid into the lack of security and lack of integrity in our system. I pointed out to the shadow Home Secretary, when he was in his place, that in a press release on 27 May, the head of the TUC backed the coalition Government’s proposals. Brendan Barber said that

“identity cards were a costly folly…and would have been an unwelcome intrusion into people’s personal liberty…Scrapping identity cards is an important sign that the new Government is committed to safeguarding civil liberties.”

When the shadow Home Secretary first became Home Secretary, he announced that ID cards would no longer be compulsory, which gave the distinct impression that he had not been much in favour of them in the first place.

I am delighted to support this Bill as the first measure that Her Majesty’s Government are bringing before the House. The compulsion by stealth was a feature that would have been completely deleterious to the interests of the people of this country. The cost was another factor altogether. Some £800 million will be saved over the next 10 years by abandoning this absurd and costly scheme. It is interesting to note that Labour Members are not taking a stance against the Bill. Perhaps that is because they understand that the cost-benefit analysis has not worked out. There is no substance to the Labour argument, and there never was. I am delighted to support this measure.