Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I forewarned the Minister’s office that I was going to make that point, and she has responded to it. However, I ask the House to consider Hansard from 13 February:"““Mr. Hollobone: What rights would other countries have to access the UK identity cards register if we hold information about their citizens?""Mr. Clarke: None””.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/2/06; col. 1177.]" That is wrong. Through the provisions of Section 17 of the 2001 Act and Clause 20 of this Bill, they will have rights to access not the audit trail data, but all the other information on the register, which, as I have endeavoured to indicate to the House, is very widespread. I point this out not to score points, but to make the general argument that this is a thoroughly ill thought-out measure, and I do not retract that for a second. Let me be clear. If this Bill really was just about identity cards, many of us would have few misgivings, if any. If the cards were voluntary, the same would be true. But we have here a Bill that is compulsory; that would require 40 million-plus citizens to be interviewed for the purposes of taking out an ID card, though I accept that if they were getting a passport at the same time they would make only one trip; that gives the Home Secretary 61 order-making powers that carry heavy penalties for citizen failures; and, above all, that has attached to it a major database of our private information, some of it highly personal. Tony McNulty, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, said in the same debate in the Commons on 13 February:"““We have always said that the most important element of the programme was the database that stands behind the card””.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/2/06; col. 1145.]" Too true—and too bad. Apart from the specifics of ID cards, and of making them effectively compulsory, there remains the intangible but vital issue of how they could affect our civic harmony in the long term. In a hyper-technical age, it is too easy to be blinded by the technology and to assume that if it is there it must be used and that it can do what it cannot. It is still the imponderables that matter most to most people—hope, trust, loyalty—elusive as they are to auditing and accountability, the nostrums of our age. Probably half of those who have written to me on this subject, none of whom has been a supporter of our uniquely centralised and data-laden compulsory cards, have been most concerned about the impact of an ever more intrusive, all-knowing state on the culture of their lives, and of the quality and feel of the society of which we are all part. Ultimately security, too, depends on trust. Without broad trust there is no allegiance, and without allegiance the police and security services can never be adequately supported, as Northern Ireland surely showed. Indeed, it is the disconnectedness between police and public that is so destructive of enforcement of the law. Without a good flow of informal intelligence, the main fruit of public support for law and order, no amount of technology, CCTV cameras, face scanners, car trackers or indeed audit trails will make up for it. We are also anxious that this huge, impersonal scheme could create an insidious chemistry between the citizen and the state, wholly counterproductive to that which we all seek. That could in part derive from the compulsory collection of audit trail personal data under paragraph 9 of Schedule 1, just in case it might become useful. ““Just in case”” is not a proper basis on which a civilised state should intrude on the privacy of its citizens, which is why the Information Commissioner, who was put there by this Parliament for a purpose, made his strong statement last October warning us of ““unwarranted and intrusive”” powers and of sleepwalking into the snooping state via what David Davis in the other place called ““a culture of complacency””. I used to take great pride in the light rein cast upon us by the state in this country; that works much the best. This amendment will buttress good sense and wise government. I beg to move. Moved, as an amendment to Motion D, leave out from ““House”” to end and insert ““do insist on its Amendments Nos. 16 and 22””.—(Lord Phillips of Sudbury.)