Identity Cards Bill

The House debated the essence of this issue on Report on 18 October. It rejected proposals similar to the Lords amendments, and I hope that it will reject them now. Although Lords amendments Nos. 16 and 22 rest on changing a ““must”” to a ““may””, which seems a very small change, they risk undermining the basis of the current identity cards proposal, and for those reasons they must be resisted strongly by the Government and by the House. We have always been clear that the identity cards scheme is being designed and is intended, eventually, to become a compulsory scheme for all UK residents, and that in the second phase of the scheme it will be a requirement to register, with a civil financial penalty regime for failure to do so. Throughout, we have also been equally clear that linking identity cards to the issue of designated documents is a central part of the scheme in the first phase. That will enable a sensible, phased introduction of identity cards. Once passports and residence permits are designated, when British nationals resident in the United Kingdom, renew or apply for their residence permits they will be entered on the national identity register and issued with cards that will serve as ID cards. That approach is well known and will not come as a surprise to the House. When the Government issued our first consultation document about a card scheme in 2002, one of the options canvassed was a universal scheme linked to passports. When we announced the decision in principle in November 2003, it was made clear that there would be a two-stage scheme and that the second stage would be compulsory. However, on the first stage, we stated in ““Identity Cards: the Next Steps””: "““By linking the card scheme to widely held identity documents most people will get a card conveniently and automatically as they renew an existing document””." That announcement in principle in 2003 was put into effect when we published the draft Bill, as long ago as April 2004, when we included the word ““must”” in clause 5(2). Yet again, we made it absolutely clear that, once designated, obtaining a passport would also involve being issued with an identity card. It is also clear that, other than the biometrics—an important development in the whole security of card systems—no information will be required from an individual as part of that process that the state does not already hold in one form or another. To put the compulsory element of the designation of documents another way, it will be compulsory for information already held by the state to be placed on the national identity register. No new information will be required as part of that process.