Identity Documents Bill

I thought we had leapt ahead of ourselves for a moment; it was great. I also put my name down to Amendment 19 because it is always important to have independent scrutiny. It makes people feel much happier and much safer. I do not see that in this case it needs to be very expensive; you do not need a huge office, a huge outside body or anything like that. Public confidence can otherwise be destroyed. Sometimes things go wrong, so it feels much happier having external independent scrutiny. We forget that at our peril. Having someone reporting up the same chain of command to the same boss is never quite the same as getting a report straight out to Parliament. On something like this, which potentially involves civil liberties and citizens’ rights, it is very important to have a direct report to Parliament, which is outside the normal chain of command, just in case. It is not that I mistrust any of the people in the system; they are trying to do a good job under difficult circumstances, particularly as the politics of it are shifting and changing on a monthly basis. There is no bad will on my part. Rather, we should always do this as a matter of principle, and it is dangerous to start not doing it. Something the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, read out reminded me of the phrase in RIPA, "““for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime””." That was the general-purpose provision that was slotted into RIPA. We were told that the Act would apply only to serious and organised crime but it ended up with local councils using it for other things. At that point, everyone realised that we had a political problem on our hands because uses can change. There could be similar issues buried within the Bill that I remember noticing when I first went through it but then forgot about.