Identity Documents Bill

This group of amendments—Amendments 9, 10 and 11, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, as well as mine—is partly probing and certainly simplifying. When I read Clause 4, I found myself completely baffled by quite a bit of it, especially subsection (3). Being a bit of an old lawyer warhorse, I just kept at it. I read it and reread it and I concluded that anyone suffering from insomnia should put subsection (3) by the side of the bed for 2 o'clock in the morning. If you read subsection (3) six times, I almost guarantee sleep. I shall read it for the sake of Hansard. It states: "““In subsection (2)(b) the reference to P or anyone else does not include, in the case of a document within subsection (1)(c), the individual to whom it relates””." I may be getting daft—I notice assenting groans from the noble Lord, Lord Bach—but I have tried in these amendments to clarify what that means. I am encouraged to do that because I am following Clause 4(2)(b) in the Identity Cards Act. I suspect that the parliamentary draftsman was trying to make things clearer by pulling out subsection (3) rather than allowing the sense of it to follow on from Clause 4(2)(b). In Clause 4(2)(a) and (b), we have a definition of what is called improper intention. That definition is, I think—and I have consulted the very helpful Bill team, and they agree—exhaustive of what improper intention is for the purpose of this very important clause. I do not see that paragraphs (a) and (b) are exhaustive of improper intention sufficient to base a prosecution under Clause 4(1). I am anxious that there should not be events of dishonesty around identity documents—the holding of them or whatever else. I do not want there to be loopholes where some clever barrister can say, ““This may have been a dishonest act by my client but it is not within Clause 4(2)””. My Amendment 10 would add a further paragraph which reads as follows: "““the intention of using or allowing or inducing another to use a document for any dishonest purpose””—" for any dishonest purpose. I cannot see why that much broader subsection can be offensive to the purport of the clause. Indeed, it may be argued—the noble Baroness may shortly argue—that my subsection renders superfluous paragraphs (a) and (b). If so, we have knocked out two paragraphs for the sake of one. On my reckoning, that is good going. In another life, I was for 26 years Jimmy Young's legal eagle, trying to explain to the baffled British public a little bit about the law of our land. If the amendments do anything to make it a bit clearer, I think that that is a job worth doing. I beg to move.