UK Borders Bill

moved Amendment No. 13A: 13A: Clause 5, page 3, line 17, leave out sub-paragraph (ii) The noble Lord said: Clause 5 gives the Government a very wide discretion to make regulations on the specification of the biometric immigration document, the purposes for which it is to be used, the circumstances in which the holder must produce it, and so on. At our last sitting on Monday, I commented on the useful practice that had been adopted in another place of taking expert evidence in a Public Bill Committee, and suggested that we might do the same in Grand Committee. Although we elicited no reaction from the Minister at that time, I am grateful to him for saying that he has already written to us about the points that were made on Monday, and I very much hope that he will see that it is included in his remarks. At its 1 March sitting, the Standing Committee—or Public Bill Committee, as I must learn to call it—took evidence from Professor Ross Anderson, the professor of security engineering at the University of Cambridge. He said, as I mentioned already, that the Government were going down the wrong route in using fingerprints rather than irises, as that made the system far more prone to errors. However, he also made some interesting comments on why public sector IT projects are so much more liable to over-run on cost than private sector projects. Perhaps I may quote from his evidence: "““Projects that have constantly shifting specifications are most likely to fail””." That should sound an alarm bell for the UK Borders Bill, and the ID and e-borders project. The stated goals are shifting too much and too often for us to be confident that robust systems will be built on time and within budget. Translating that warning into a procedure for scrutinising the Bill, we should be challenging the enormous breadth of the BID regulations and seeking to persuade the Government to tell us what they intend to do and whether they have any idea at this stage of how the systems are going to work. I am glad to see later amendments where the Government attempt to go into a bit more detail than we have had hitherto. This amendment is intended to elicit from the Minister an explanation of the meaning of this paragraph as one example out of the many that we could have picked. Can he explain the meaning of the expression, "““in connection with specified immigration procedures””," and can he give us any examples? If the document is to be used, that implies that it has to be produced. The official for whom it is produced will then have to be able to read the biometric information on it, presumably to compare it with a database of BIDs. Which officials will have the technology to do this and where will they be located? Is this another case like that of passport applications, a point raised by my noble friend Lord Roberts, where there were only 67 locations in the whole of the United Kingdom to which a person could apply? Although it was claimed that remote locations were being provided with places where the information could be inputted into the system via a webcam—presumably the same thing could be done with fingerprints—the number of locations was few and far between. There were whole areas of the country in which people would have had to travel considerable distances in order to access the system. Further, will there be different levels of use with a larger number of officials looking only at the alphanumeric information and being able to refer the holder to someone else if a question arises that can be answered only by the biometrics? If the Minister cannot answer these questions, we will be walking into a situation where the contractors who are to provide the technology are given only a very general specification, the details being filled in as the project develops. That is the very scenario which Professor Anderson has warned leads to cost overruns on public sector IT projects. I turn now to another set of concerns raised by the JCHR and I shall be interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has to say about them. The Joint Committee complained about the open-ended powers in the biometric clauses and voiced its fear that Article 8 rights would be infringed. It was unable to assess the compatibility of the power with Article 8 because there were no draft regulations. The committee wrote to the Minister asking for further details. As we would expect, the Government reassured the JCHR that the Bill and its secondary legislation would be fully compatible with Article 8, their objective being to ensure that everyone subject to immigration control has a secure BID confirming his or her immigration status and identity. The document would link into the national identity scheme—there was some discussion in another place about these proposals being a pilot for identity cards which was not denied by the Government and is now, I think, common knowledge—and would enable other government departments, employers and public agencies to confirm that the holder was eligible for employment or state benefits, and presumably for medical treatment, although this was not mentioned. It would stop anyone fraudulently obtaining a national insurance number. The JCHR, having considered the Government’s response, found that it was unable to assess the compatibility of the scheme with the right to respect for family life in Article 8. As examples of the information the committee would have needed to reach a conclusion, it mentioned the type of biometric information, the purposes for which it was to be used, the extent to which it would apply to children—as we have just discussed—and the length of time it would be retained. The answers to these questions are now gradually seeping out, but are not such as to alleviate wholly the concerns on human rights raised by the JCHR. The more we extend the uses of the document beyond immigration control into purposes that are wholly unrelated to immigration, such as access to benefits, health, education or employment, the more likely it is that errors will occur and that some holders will be deprived of their rights. The inaccuracy of one-to-many searches, as I have mentioned, was explored by Sub-Committee F in its inquiry on the Schengen Information System II. Clearly, for some of the purposes envisaged by the BID one-to-many searches will be necessary where the biometric on the document is compared with all the others on the database. With SIS II, the legislation permits the use of one-to-many searches only once the Commission has reported that the relevant technology is available and ready, and Sub-Committee F recommended that independent experts should referee that report, and that it should be adopted by the Council only after consultation with the European Parliament, and that it should be deposited for scrutiny by the Select Committee. In their reply to the Select Committee’s recommendation, the Government accepted that one-to-many searches using fingerprints would be possible only when the Commission had produced its report. Therefore, I invite the Minister to tell the Committee that one-to-many searches using the biometric information in the BID will not be permitted either until the technology is given the all-clear by Europe. I hope the Minister will answer that question at the end of the debate. In addition, if the system is to satisfy an increasing number of requirements which have nothing to do with our borders, but which are concerned with the internal policing of everybody of foreign appearance who applies for unemployment benefit or goes to a jobcentre or attends an interview with a prospective employer, or needs a dental check-up, the document is effectively already an identity card, as it will become in law in due course. Professor Anderson told the Standing Committee in another place that he was unable to hazard a guess about how much of the £20 billion that the London School of Economics estimates the scheme will cost overall would be carved out in developing the BIDs. When is this project going out to tender? What figure is included for it in the new spending estimates? The same considerations apply to Amendment No. 13B. I very much regret that the Explanatory Notes give the Committee no idea of what sort of specified circumstances the Government have in mind where a person’s immigration or nationality status would make it necessary for the BID to be used. If it is to ascertain whether the person is eligible for employment, immigration status would be relevant. But would nationality every come into the picture, or could this sub-paragraph be a means of enabling employers to discriminate? The Minister no doubt saw the article in the Guardian yesterday about the denial of antenatal care to a migrant worker, reported by Médecins du Monde, and the comment on its findings by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Mr Paul Hunt. The average length of stay of the 349 women in the study was three years, so they obviously had not come to the UK for the purposes of getting free health treatment. Will the BID be a necessary passport to healthcare generally, and to prenatal care in particular? Are PCTs entitled to refuse care to failed asylum seekers? Is not this a despicable way of persuading them to leave us, in addition to the forced destitution under Section 9? I hope that we shall have some answers to these questions before we leave this clause. I beg to move.