Identity Cards Act 2006 (Information and Code of Practice on Penalties) Order 2009

My Lords, we on these Benches have consistently opposed the introduction of the ID card scheme. We have never seen it as likely to be effective against terrorism. We have not seen it as solving any problems, but as raising some new ones, and as a very expensive thing to introduce when the money could be so much better spent. Personally, I associate these Benches with the criticisms of the scheme made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham. Some of her specific questions are ones that I would also like to ask the Minister—especially about the position of referees. If they get the information wrong, what is the penalty on them? The part of the scheme on which I want to concentrate my remarks this evening is what lies behind the ID cards, which are, after all, just bits of plastic—albeit with biometric information on them. What lies behind the ID cards is the national identity register. In that regard, I want to raise three points. First, is the scheme actually voluntary? Secondly, the Government tell us that the national identity register is not substantially different from the passport database, but I believe that it is. Thirdly, the Government claim that the national identity register will be useful. For what? First, everyone who applies for any designated document must register personal details on the NIR database, according to Section 5(2) of the Identity Cards Act 2006, which mentions designated documents. The fact is, therefore, that for the purposes of everyday living, the database will be compulsory for anyone who wants a designated document. The first designated document will be a passport. Then, any official licence, registration certificate or permit can be designated. That includes many documents used in everyday life, such as driving licences. Can the Minister confirm which documents the Government intend to designate? If designation is widespread, the idea that the scheme will be voluntary is completely false. People will be unable to go about their lives as normal without registration on the database. That problem is increased by the fact that there is no mechanism for being removed from the NIR once you are on it. So it is not voluntary. The Minister talked about fines. He said that the Government do not intend to be punitive, but it will be interesting to see how that operates when it comes in. If you forget to notify authorities of your change of address, a £1000 fine, which is at the maximum, sounds pretty punitive. In the debate on identity cards in the other place last Monday, the Minister suggested that the NIR is not much different from the passport database, but it is clear that it is a completely different type of database in two ways. The first is in what is stored. At the moment, just a small amount of personal information is stored on the UK Passport Service database: name, age, date of birth, place of birth and nationality. Schedule 1 to the ID cards Act sets out 50 pieces of information—the Minister has listed some of them—that the NIR can hold on each citizen, in addition to fingerprints and facial scans, and current and past UK and overseas places of residence throughout the lives of anyone on it. Those are all included. The legislation on the register states that further information can be added. There is also the potential for links to other government databases. The amount that will be stored on the NIR is completely different from what is stored now. It would be helpful if the Minister agreed with me on that point. The second difference concerns what it will be used for. The passport database is a passive or inert database. Its data is accessible to the police in very limited circumstances. It was never envisaged that it should be shared between departments, and it does not accumulate over time. The NIR would be much more active, accessed by all sorts of public service deliverers. The Minister has given some details of how it would be accessed, but that access is recorded as an audit trail of the number and type of organisations who have accessed someone's record, which actually creates a profile of a person’s life. As Dr Palmer said in the other place: ""The original reason why the audit trail was to be included was to protect people and give them the reassurance that they could see which organisations had been looking at their data. If we are serious about that ... we should give the individual the power either to dispense with the audit trail or to edit it".—[Official Report, Commons, 6/7/09; col. 788.]." Do the Government intend to respond to that suggestion, which came from their Benches? Then there is the provision of information without consent of regulations. In the Coroners and Justice Bill, we have just thrown out—or the Government withdrew, after opposition in another place—the information-sharing clause. We feel that this provision brings back wide-ranging interdepartmental information-sharing in a new guise. In other words, the NIR can create a detailed profile of every citizen accessed by a range of agencies. What is the register meant to do? According to the Home Office website, it will help to protect people from identity fraud and theft and to ensure that people are who they say they are. Those are big claims, but it is not clear whether either of them is achievable. The team at the LSE, including top privacy experts such as Simon Davies, investigated the Government’s claims about savings on identity fraud and found that they could not be backed up. Prominent technology experts such as Jerry Fishenden, the national technology officer at Microsoft, have warned for a long time that the scheme could trigger massive identity fraud. It may—we believe that it will—create far more problems than it will solve. Finally, we return to cost. The Government say that the scheme will cost about £5 billion over the next 10 years. The LSE estimated that it would be more like £20 billion, but we feel that the real cost, besides all the money, will be to our privacy. The national ID scheme is not voluntary, and the database is the clearest indication of that. After the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, has moved her Motion, I will move mine.