Before I speak to my new clause, I want to address one or two of the things that the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), just raised. By not accepting his motion to recommit the Bill to a Committee, we have in effect delegated large parts of the work on this important Bill to the House of Lords. I say directly to the Whip on the Treasury Bench that, when the Bill comes back to the Commons in ping-pong, I recommend that the Whips Office allows considerable time for us to debate the changes that the Lords makes. At the end of the day, this House is responsible to our constituents and these issues will have a direct impact on them, so we ought to have a strong say over what is done with respect to this Bill.
New clause 43 in my name is entitled “Right to use non-digital verification services”. Digitisation has had tremendous benefits for society. Administrative tasks that once took weeks or even years can now be done in seconds, thanks to technology, but that technology has come with considerable risks as well as problems of access. The internet is an equaliser in many ways; I can access websites and services in East Yorkshire in the same way that we do here. I can send and receive money, contact friends and family, organise families, do work, and do all sorts of other things that we could not once do.
However, the reality is more nuanced. Some people lack the technological literacy or simply the hardware to get online and make the most of what is out there—think of elderly people, the homeless and those living on the breadline. As with many things, those groups risk being left behind by the onward march of technology through no fault of their own. Indeed, some people do not want to go fully online. Many people who are perfectly au fait with the latest gadgets are none the less deeply concerned about the security of their data, and who can blame them?
My bank account has been accessed from Israel in the past. My online emails have been broken into during political battles of one sort or another. These things are risky. I hope nobody in the Chamber has forgotten the Edward Snowden revelations about the National Security
Agency and GCHQ, which revealed a vast network of covert surveillance and data gathering by Government agencies from ordinary online activity, and the sharing of private information without consent. More recently, we have heard how Government agencies monitored people’s social media posts during the pandemic, and data trading by private companies is an enormous and lucrative industry.
What is more, as time passes and the rise of artificial intelligence takes hold, the ability to make use of central databases is becoming formidable. It is beyond imagination, so people are properly cautious about what data they share and how they share it. For some people—this is where the issue is directly relevant to this Bill—that caution will mean avoiding the use of digital identity verification, and for others that digital verification is simply inaccessible. The Bill therefore creates two serious problems by its underlying assumptions.
Already it is becoming extremely difficult for people to live anything approaching a normal life if they are not fully wired into the online network. If they cannot even verify who they are without that access, what are they supposed to do? That is why I want to create a right to offline verification and, in effect, offline identification. We saw earlier this year what can happen when someone is excluded from basic services, with the planned closure of Nigel Farage’s bank account. That case was not related to identification, but it made clear how much of an impact such exclusion can have on someone’s life. Those who cannot or do not wish to verify their identity digitally could end up in the same position as Farage and many others who have seen their access to banking restricted for unfair reasons.
The rise of online banking, although a great convenience for many, must not mean certain others being left out. We are talking about fairly fundamental rights here. Those people who, by inclination or otherwise, find it preferable or easier to stick to old-fashioned ways must not be excluded from society. My amendment would require that all services requiring identity verification offer a non-digital alternative, ensuring that everyone, regardless of who they are, will have the same access.
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That non-digital alternative could take a number of forms. It could simply mean working with the Post Office to allow people to verify their identity in person, or having people post in copies of their existing identity documents, passports, driving licences and the like. The specific route is not the most important thing; what matters is that people have a choice and are not coerced into providing the data through digital means, whether their reason is concern about their privacy or something else.
Some may worry about what that means for digital-only services such as some of the so-called challenger banks, but there is nothing to stop such services remaining online and simply outsourcing the non-digital alternative for verification to a trusted third party with physical capacity. It is only right that those banks, like everyone else, offer services to everyone, regardless of how they want to prove who they are. It may well be—in fact I think it is quite likely—that a series of organisations
such as solicitors, banks and other institutions go into the business of providing physical rather than online verification.
Some 20 years ago, in the face of opposition in this place and in the country at large, the Blair Government abandoned identity cards. The reason the cards were opposed was the central control of a single piece of data about individuals. It was not about the card, but about the central control of data. That problem still applies today and people should still worry about it.
This Bill marks another step into the rapidly advancing new world of technology. It is crucial that we get this right now. If we make presumptions in this Bill that lead to people having to depend on online identification, we will create problems down the road that we have not foreseen. I say to the Minister on the Front Bench that I will not press my new clause to a vote this time, but I hope the Government will look properly at creating that right during the Bill’s passage through the Lords. It seems to me a perfectly sensible and intelligent thing for the Government to undertake.
The last point I want to make relates to the issues that the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), raised. To be fair to him, he raised them with me before they came to the House, and I agree with him that something like what he is proposing is necessary, but it needs to be really severely constrained. There are already commercial methods for doing some of the things he wants to do that are less intrusive than what the Government have proposed. Again, I hope we can talk to him in the interim between the Bill clearing this House and its going to the Lords. I am sure that the Opposition have got the same aims here: to get an outcome that is fair to ordinary people but protects the taxpayer from the massive frauds that the Minister is trying to stop.