Identity Cards Bill

I shall begin by saying something that will comfort the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis). Again, I shall quote the Home Affairs Committee report on ID cards, which addressed the question of the use of language: "““For most people, to travel abroad and to drive are fundamentals. It cannot be argued that these would be given up voluntarily. To describe the first phase of the Government’s proposals as ‘voluntary’ stretches the English language to breaking point.””" Ministers have got themselves into a little bit of unnecessary difficulty through that choice of word. In reality, people must accept that if they want a passport, they will have to go on to the national identity register, and the question is whether that is justifiable. As a supporter of ID cards and the national identity register, it seems to me that that approach is right and sensible. It would be nonsense to go through the entire process of collecting one set of biometric data and storing it with all the relevant background information for the purpose of issuing a passport, and then to run an entirely separate exercise in parallel to collect slightly different biometric data and store them on a different identity register in order to have an ID card system. Running the two systems together will be far more convenient for the citizen, and it makes much more sense in terms of building a system that has integrity and security. Furthermore, it will certainly be far more cost-effective. Moving towards ID cards and a national identity register means that using passports as a designated document is the sensible way forward. To be fair, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden spent most of his speech attacking the principle behind the measure rather than the use of the word ““voluntary””. He attempted to argue that we should not require people to go on to the national identity register as part of the process of obtaining a passport because the risks posed by the national identity register are so immense that it is unjustifiable to ask people to go on to it. That basic contention lies at the heart of the entire debate about ID cards, but those fears are misplaced. The scheme’s opponents have failed to make substantive arguments. I know that it is slightly bad form to quote one’s own intervention and the response to it, but I shall do so on this occasion. When the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden made a powerful point about the dangers of bringing different databases together, I asked him to name two pieces of data that are kept separately and that he thinks it would be dangerous to bring together. Hon. Members will have noted that he could not name two pieces of data that we should not put together in one place. He mentioned medical records and criminal records, which have nothing to do with ID cards, and names and national insurance numbers are stored together on plenty of databases. He could not establish what would go wrong if two particular pieces of data were stored together.