Identity Cards Bill

Last week I suggested to the Home Secretary that, if he rejected the amendments that were before us then, he would, as turned out to be the case, be facing the amendments before us today, which are arguably just as problematic from his point of view, because they would, as he explained, allow a wholesale opt-out from the need to register for an ID card. It remains my view that he would have been well advised to settle for the amendments that were before us last week. Even so, I hope that, even at this late stage, the Home Secretary will put himself and us out of our misery and accept the amendments from Lord Armstrong of Ilminster. As the noble Lord said in the debate in the other place yesterday:"““My amendments would restore an element of voluntariness—of personal freedom—which is absent from the Government’s proposals””," but that voluntarism, or voluntariness, as he put it, was entirely in keeping with the Government’s oft-quoted election manifesto, where there was a clear emphasis on voluntarism in the introduction of identity cards, an emphasis which the Government have been so quick and keen to forget. As the noble Lord rightly said:"““There are a good many people out there who genuinely thought that the Government were proposing a voluntary scheme, and they were prepared to go along with it on that understanding””.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 28 March 2006; Vol. 680, c. 651.]" The Government have already conceded the principle—it was a welcome concession—that compulsion will occur only on the back of separate primary legislation, which makes it all the more inexplicable that they seek to reject amendments that would allow them to do precisely that and take a voluntarist approach in the early stages of the introduction of identity cards, to be replaced by legislation enforcing compulsion at a later stage. That is the Government’s intention. That is what they have explained to us. The amendments do not disturb that plan at all; indeed, they are perfectly consistent with it. The other compelling reason why the Government would be well advised to support the amendments is that they would allow time to deal with the accumulating list of uncertainties about how the draconian ID database would work in practice. We still do not know how much it would cost, who would run it or how they would run it. We have heard conflicting messages about chip and pin features and biometric features, but we do not know what would be on the card. On Monday, we heard that yet another uncertainty had come to light. In a written answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) explained that some British citizens would have two identity cards—one listing their nationality, which could be confiscated if the Government wished to prevent them from travelling, and another not listing their nationality, which they would retain while the other one was confiscated, to access domestic services. The written answer stated:"““However, to ensure that anyone subject to restrictions for an extended period of time can demonstrate their identity for domestic purposes, they will be able to obtain an identity card which will be issued to the same standards as other cards but which will not be valid for travel. This will be achieved by not specifying the nationality of the card holder on the face of the card.—[Official Report, 27 March 2006; Vol. 444, c. 758W.]" We now know that we might have not one, but two identity cards, on top of all the other uncertainties that I have enumerated. This is a model of bad Government policy and bad legislation. It raises the question why the country is expected to accept the imposition of a scheme that we know is illiberal in principle and flawed and open-ended in practice. For that reason and many others, I hope that the House will support the amendments tabled by Lord Armstrong.