Identity Documents Bill

My Lords, I put my name to these amendments because I, too, had read the clause and got myself into complete confusion, so I thought that anything had to be better. I started trying to unravel this in my mind, and given that this challenge fell on a sleepless night, I thought that it might be quite interesting to try it. What the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, has just said is true. The essence of it all is there is no point in having these laws if you cannot actually catch people. If we leave a loophole here, there is no point to a lot of the Bill. People will possess false identity documents and we will not be able to lock them up or punish them for it, and what is the point of the whole exercise if we cannot? It is critical that we get this clause right. I read the amendment with interest. I thought that if I put some plain English in, that might help. I worked out that if person P, who is basically the crook, nicks my driving licence, which is covered by the wording Clause 4(1)(c), "““an identity document that relates to someone else””—" in other words, it relates to me—we then have to look at what he uses it for. On the question of ““improper intention””, I was interested by the word ““establishing””, and I would like an answer about that. Clause 4(2)(a) talks about, "““using the document for establishing personal information””." Does that mean that, having grabbed my passport or driving licence, person P, in impersonating me, is trying to get information about himself on to the database so that he can establish and build up a false identity on the database that will take over my identity,? In other words, is he changing my address to his own, and things like that? If he sticks to driving licences, that is probably easier in the first instance because the checks are lower. That is what the word ““establishing”” could mean, but equally it could be used in the other sense of person P ringing up to check that it is indeed my address. I do not know which way round ““establishing”” is meant. Is it active or passive? Is the crook pushing or pulling the information? That ambiguity could be dangerous. The word may be meant both ways, but lots of people are allowed to establish my personal details. A policeman, for example, needs to do so when he stops me and finds out whether mine is a genuine address. I do not know which way round the word is meant. Then we come to the next bit, Clause 4(2)(b), which says that the crook can use the document to try to verify personal information about himself. Why would the crook want to verify personal information about himself? It is not personal information about the crook if he has established a new identity for me; it is actually personal information about a fictional person who appears to have my identity. I can see that we are going to have great fun about what is ““personal information”” with regard to a stolen identity. So, we get into the little problem about verifying the personal identity of a person who does not exist, but then we come to Clause 4(3). I rewrote this myself to say that the actions detailed in subsection (2)(b) are not an improper use if my driving licence—the identity document mentioned in subsection (1)(c)—is used by the crook, person P, to verify my personal information, the person to whom it relates. In other words, it says that the crook can use that document to find out information about me. Okay, big deal. I do not see why that is so dodgy. That is the one exception that does not matter one way or the other. If that is not the case, I am not really sure what subsection (3) means and I would love to know, but that, after a lot of tortuous back and forth and rewriting, is what I arrived at. The only other thing that occurred to me just now about improper intentions is that it is an improper intention, "““to have in P’s possession or under P’s control””." This is where the matter becomes critical, because I know that the word ““possession”” has huge implications in law. You are in possession of a car if you have the car keys, from the point of view of drunk driving, whether you have an intention of using those car keys or not. If someone else has your shotgun but does not hold a certificate, and they drive 100 yards to get it back to your house because you have just fallen ill and have to go to hospital, they are in possession of that shotgun at that point without a proper certificate. So, if someone takes your driving licence off you in order to verify something about you, they are in possession of your driving licence at that point. I do not know if there are any issues around that, but as I was reading this I suddenly started thinking, ““Hang on, we’ve got possession issues here as well””. The whole thing is a ghastly muddle, and anything that could be done to sort it out would be better. Hence I back the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury.