Identity Cards Bill

Public Bill Committee, 7 July 2005.

Standing Committee D

Clause 2 - Individuals entered in Register

Patrick Mercer (Conservative, Newark)

I beg to move amendment No. 12, in clause 2, page 2, line 36, leave out '16' and insert '18'.

Jimmy Hood (Labour, Lanark and Hamilton East)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 17, in clause 2, page 3, line 15, leave out subsections (6) and (7).

No. 126, in clause 2, page 3, line 15, leave out subsection (6).

No. 18, in clause 2, page 3, line 20, at end add—

'(8) No draft order containing a provision that the Secretary of State is authorised to make by this section is to be laid before Parliament unless—

(a) the Secretary of State has prepared and published a report containing a proposal for the making of such provision;

(b) the report sets out the Secretary of State's reasons for making the proposal;

(c) the report has been laid before Parliament and each House has approved the proposal contained in the report, either with or without modifications; and

(d) the draft order gives effect to the proposal so far as approved by both Houses.'.

Patrick Mercer (Conservative, Newark)

I will also speak to amendments Nos. 17 and 18, which are complementary to amendment No. 12, and I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) will speak to amendment No. 126.

On the surface, amendment No. 12, may seem simple and straightforward, and we have already touched on one or two aspects of it. Clearly, its purpose is to try to define the individuals who will be entered in the register and the limitations that will be placed upon them. First and foremost, we would like the age in subsection (2)(a) to be raised from 16 to 18. However, before coming to that, I would be interested to know from the Minister the upper age limit at which identity cards should be carried, and information about the cards put on the register in the first place.

We have discussed on previous amendments the fact that the elderly will find the requirement extremely stressful. I fear that by now the Committee probably knows the members of my family better than the family of anyone else in the Room; that leads me to introduce my mother into the debate. My mother had an identity card, a gas mask and other bits and pieces during the war, when circumstances were in some ways not dissimilar to those we are discussing today. When I had the privilege of serving on the previous Standing Committee that considered the Bill I discussed it with my parents and my mother said, ''What's the problem with an identity register and an identity card? I had one during the war, carried it happily and had nothing to fear. It proved and demonstrated that I wasn't a Nazi''—although that is something we sometimes doubt in the family. I told her that that made a lot of sense, but now it looks as if everyone from 16 to we know not what age will have to surrender 50 or more pieces of information about themselves and then register for the card, probably in several years' time—not to mention the cost, which I am sure we will discuss at length later.

My mother was 10 years younger than my father, but none the less she is an elderly lady in her mid-70s. She pointed out that by the time she is likely to get a card, she will be pushing 80. She asked whether it was really necessary for her to have her fingerprints taken and her iris scanned. How likely is it that she is a terrorist? Clearly, not at all. Much more importantly and realistically, how likely is it that someone will want to use the identity of an 80-year old woman to defraud the Government, or to carry out a serious crime or act of terrorism? I think that it is pretty unlikely, and I would be grateful if the Minister would reassure us that the elderly will not have to go through the stressful process of being assessed for information for the register and the card. What upper age limit does the Minister intend to introduce, to spare the elderly from those stresses and keep the cost of the card down?

When discussing amendments yesterday we heard that for every piece of information, every individual who must register, every individual who must go forward for a card and the issue of every card, there will be a cost, not just to the individual but to the Government. I would therefore have thought it sensible for the Government to tell us the upper age limit.

I shall return to the precise point of the amendment.

Mark Prisk (Conservative, Hertford and Stortford)

Before this sitting, I looked at some of the preparatory information, and it seems that the problem of eye scans becomes significant beyond the 65 to 70 age group, because changes take place in the eye. Does my hon. Friend share my concern about whether the evidence presented by the Government on biometric testing—particularly eye scanning—is sufficient? I suspect that such tests would not only be awkward for the individuals involved, but might prove increasingly unreliable for people of that age group. Does my hon. Friend share that view?

Patrick Mercer (Conservative, Newark)

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his useful intervention, but I shall not go into that issue in any detail now, because I know that the point will be covered by later amendments. Suffice it to say that my hon. Friend has made a very good point when he says that the older a person gets, the more the retina deteriorates and changes; I think that skin patterns can also change.

The crux of one of the criticisms by the London School of Economics of the Government's intentions was that the cost would be considerably greater, particularly in relation to the elderly, because cards would have to be replaced on a much more frequent basis than the Government claim at the moment. I do not want to get into an argument; I am sure that we shall eviscerate this subject at a later stage. None the less, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making a very good point. No mention of the elderly can be made without looking in more detail at the issue that he has raised.

I shall move to the other end of the spectrum. When is a child not a child? How do we define a child—under 16 or under 18? I am sure that many hon. Members will have seen the child impact assessment from the all-party group on children, which says that the

''Bill contains the power to extend ID cards to children under 16 through secondary legislation''.

Will the Minister expand on that? I shall quote again from the same document:

''For 16 and 17 year olds (and for all children if the powers of the Bill are extended) there will be a duplication of information on the National Identity Register and on the information sharing indexes to be established by the Children Act 2004 . . . the National Identity Register will contain information on individuals aged over 16. Cl.2(7) provides that the Secretary of State may by order amend the age . . . meaning that the provisions of this Bill could potentially apply to everyone in the UK from birth.''

I appreciate that we went through the ''The Day of the Jackal'' argument yesterday, and I do not wish to be flippant or irritate the Minister more than I did then. The fact remains that I should be most grateful if the Minister cleared up that point.

The all-party group goes on to state:

''The accepted definition of a child in the UK is up to 18 years, with some exceptions for particularly vulnerable groups''.

The document also informs us that two databases holding information about children will overlap with the new register. One is the Connexions card database, which was established under section 117 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. It is for 13 to 19-year-olds, apparently, and may be enhanced by a smart card that will be proposed in the Green Paper on youth. Secondly, information-sharing indices are to be established under section 12 of the Children Act 2004.

The point of the amendment is to ask the Minister to point out whether information is to be duplicated. If so, are minors—those aged under 18—not already dealt with and registered perfectly adequately? Should not the age of 18, rather than 16, be introduced? That, combined with the earlier points that I made about the elderly, is the crux of amendment No. 12.

I shall now scoop up amendments Nos. 17 and 18. Amendment No. 17 is, I hope, fairly straightforward. It would merely strike out clause 2(6). Amendment No. 18, which is complementary to it, would insert another subsection with four paragraphs. That new subsection states very clearly that

''No draft order containing a provision that the Secretary of State is authorised to make by this section is to be laid before Parliament unless—

(a) the Secretary of State has prepared and published a report containing a proposal for the making of such provision;

(b) the report sets out the Secretary of State's reasons for making the proposal;

(c) the report has been laid before Parliament and each House has approved the proposal contained in the report, either with or without modifications; and

(d) the draft order gives effect to the proposal so far as approved by both Houses.'.''

I fully understand that the Bill is only enabling legislation, and I have no doubt that the Minister will quite rightly major on that idea. We said in our extended deliberations yesterday that the Bill needed to mature, and that the provisions would become clear only once it was put into operation. I completely accept that, and it would be immature of me, and of my party, not to. It would also be unrealistic to think that any Bill will be perfect when it has passed through the two Houses.

None the less, in the context of the enabling legislation in the Bill, amendment No. 18 would make it clearer that much of the detail will be decided only as the Act matures and as registration and the issuing of cards are phased in over several years. For instance, who will carry the cards? I know that there has been much debate on that already, but we can return to the subject if we want. How much information is to be included, both on the register and the card? Who will have access to it? Who will not be included, and, as we have already asked, what compulsion, if any, will there be to carry the card? All that seems to be open for the Home Secretary to decide via secondary legislation.

The Bill refers to an affirmative resolution by both Houses of Parliament and that will act as some check on the Government, but the affirmative procedure is an extremely blunt tool because it does not allow for the amendment of a proposed regulation. The power to amend regulations should be written into the Bill. That would allow full legislative scrutiny and debate in Parliament. I fully understand that clause 7 allows for some alteration of powers, but I firmly believe that without amendment No. 18, we will pass a Bill that gives the Home Secretary powers to act without any further decent and detailed scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament.

The nub of the amendments is simple. First, there is the change relating to the upper and lower age limits. Secondly, and probably more importantly, amendment No. 18 would mean that if those powers were introduced, the Bill would make it clear that any alterations or changes—for instance, in relation to any compulsion to carry the card—will not simply be passed via an affirmative resolution but must be placed in front of both Houses of Parliament and subjected to proper scrutiny.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The points about age have largely been made by the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer). The amendment standing in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) is fairly brief. It would delete subsection (6), which gives the Secretary of State the power to modify the age limit specified in subsection (2)(a) by order. Strictly speaking, I suppose subsection (7) would become somewhat redundant if that happened, so to that extent, the Conservative amendment, which would delete it, is to be commended.

I tabled this probing amendment because it is right to highlight the fact that there is a power to alter by order. Despite the very important protection that has been added in subsection (7), which is certainly better than the previous safeguard, the Liberal Democrats still believe that any alteration of the age should be included in the Bill and should require primary rather than secondary legislation. I am not a great fan of secondary legislation, as scrutiny of it is far too perfunctory. It is particularly undesirable when it seeks to amend primary legislation. That seems to be very much in vogue with parliamentary draftsmen at the moment, but I do not favour the practice.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I shall add one brief comment to those made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark and the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. I repeat a concern, which I have often expressed in Committees on other Bills since 1997, about regulation-making powers. It is one thing for a Government to set before the House legislation that contains regulation-making powers, but quite another to do so without giving Members any indication of the shape, size or remit of those powers.

There has been far too much legislation of that sort since the Government came to office. They might say that it is for administrative convenience or a better process of legislation, but it requires us to legislate in a vacuum. The House cannot sensibly scrutinise legislation if we are simply looking at a Christmas tree on which a Secretary of State will hang many different regulations in due course.

Secondly, even if one accepts that statutory instruments are a good way of making legislation—which I do not—once they have been laid before the House through the affirmative or negative procedure, we cannot amend them but can only accept or reject them. I suspect that that is not a very intelligent way of proceeding. I therefore urge the Government to have the self-confidence to allow their regulations to be properly debated and scrutinised, because in failing to provide us with draft regulations now—I doubt very much that we will see them on Report, and that any of them will be ready for the other place—

Kali Mountford (Labour, Colne Valley)

The basis of the hon. Gentleman's argument seems to be that he dislikes secondary legislation, but this procedure is not new, so surely the Conservative party used it when it was in government. Will he tell us whether his party was against such regulations then?

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I was trying to make a serious constitutional point, so perhaps the hon. Lady will desist from the, ''You did it in your time, so yah boo sucks!'' sort of argument. I am not trying to advance that sort of argument. I am trying to demonstrate that the purpose of a Committee, and of a Parliament, is to ensure that the legislation that we pass is good. I might disagree with it, but if we are going to have it, we might as well make it as good as we can. [Interruption.] I did not intend to provoke a row; I am trying to advance an argument. The hon. Lady might not know the difference.

Jimmy Hood (Labour, Lanark and Hamilton East)

Order. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman would not mind a row, but I do not want any rows in Committee. Nor do I want hon. and right hon. Members to heckle across the Committee Room when a Member is speaking. I hope to give everyone the opportunity to have their say, but they will do so when they are on their feet, not from a sedentary position.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Thank you, Mr. Hood. The argument that I wish to deploy is that it is not good to legislate in a vacuum. We are not doing our constituents or Parliament any good if we allow Governments of either complexion—perhaps that will help the hon. Lady—to create a statutory framework on which to hang unseen unknown regulations, which when we come to debate them must be accepted or rejected but cannot be amended. That is not a good way to produce legislation.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I would like clarification from the Minister on how he decided on the age of 16. Recently, London Transport decided to allow schoolchildren to travel free on the buses. For some people it is as important to be able to prove that they are under 16 as it is for others to prove that they are over 16, so an ID card would be useful.

From the point of view of administration, it also seems logical—perhaps this is the purpose of subsection (6)—to introduce ID cards that are linked with the birth certificate and thereby have those details, rather than issuing them at 16. It would be a one-stop process to put people on the register. Also, 16 is a crucial age. Sixteen-year-olds are allowed to go places that 15 year-olds are not. If they can apply to go on the register only once they are 16, they will have to wait before they manage to get themselves on the register and get an ID card, should they wish to have one to show that they are 16.

My final point is that an identity system may be useful. I grew up in Vienna, where there is a requirement to carry identification. I stress ''identification'', which is different from a specific type of ID card. People had to be able to prove at any time who they were by showing any one of a number of forms of ID; they could choose whatever sort of card they liked. I had a Schulausweis—a school ID card. If a nine-year-old gets lost in a foreign city where they do not speak the language, producing identification may be helpful in returning them to their family—and such things do not necessarily happen abroad, so this could apply any time that children were separated from their parents.

John Robertson (Labour, Glasgow North West)

I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman's argument. Perhaps he could simplify it a bit for someone who was born and lived in a tenement in Glasgow. It is difficult to understand where he is going. Is he arguing for or against introducing a card for 16-year-olds? Does he want them for people aged 14 or nine—or 18, as the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) suggests?

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I am exploring the arguments about why 16 was chosen. There are advantages and disadvantages to having identification. I made it clear that I have no personal objection to carrying identification—we all carry it now. However, I am against the principle of a database on which all the details listed in clause 1 are kept and can then be used. That is separate from individuals being able to prove quickly what their name and address is.

I am putting forward my argument because the purpose of the Committee, if I may respectfully say so, is to determine whether a clause is appropriate or whether it can be improved. I am giving examples of scenarios in which different age groups would be affected by a change in the clause. Will the Minister clarify why the age of 16 has been chosen, as I have given examples of how those in different situations could benefit in different ways?

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

Will the Minister clarify one point further? Clause 2(2) states that an individual will be entitled to be entered in the register from the age of 16. Does that mean that some people will be entered in the register before the age of 16? For example, at birth, would their registration in the national birth certificate register be transferred so that there was a skeleton entry before they input their information at the age of 16, or does ''entitled'' mean that nobody will be on the register before that age unless that is prescribed by the Secretary of State?

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

All that the lead amendment seeks to do, as the hon. Member for Newark suggested, is to change the entitlement to registration age from 16 to 18. As I understand it, the clause says ''entitlement'' because, as a piece of enabling legislation, it will start off as voluntary and procedures will be brought in to move to compulsion. There is not that compulsion at the start. That is all that ''entitlement'' means; it does not mean that people could be registered under 16. I will come to the question about birth certificates later.

The age of 16 was chosen simply because it is the age at which each individual is entitled to a separate passport. We have said clearly that from next year we will implement the first generation of biometric passports and that the ID card system will build on the second generation from 2008 onwards. Of course, there are compelling arguments to make the age 18, 21 or 14, or to say that the system should start from birth, but the practicalities of how we will implement the project mean that the age of 16, and the piggy-backing on top of the—I am struggling not to say roll-out—implementation of the biometric passports, are the way to go.

The hon. Member for Newark and subsequently the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) gave us the rather lazy canard about carrying the ID card; no one will be compelled to carry the ID card, and we must get that clear. It would be nice if people avoided that in their examples from Vienna and elsewhere. We have not had a wadi yet today, but doubtless we will. There is nothing in all 45 clauses, or in the schedules, to suggest the compulsory carrying of ID cards. I will keep saying that every time an Opposition Member suggests that that element is present.

The link with the passport is the absolute key.

Mr. Garnier rose—

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I will come to the hon. and learned Gentleman in a moment.

Sixteen is also the age at which a national insurance number is issued. Combating illegal working is one of the main aims of the ID card scheme. ID cards will make it easier for employers to check the age of potential employees and their entitlement to work. Young people—admittedly not all of them—are likely to be more economically active after 16, and will need to open a bank or building society account if they do not have one already. An ID card will make that easier.

I will give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman now, if he still wants to intervene.

Mr. Garnier indicated dissent.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I will now deal with the other points, because some genuine points were made.

I shall pass over what is in part a serious debate about constitutionality, secondary legislation and the ''Christmas tree'' nature of enabling legislation. Suffice it to say that the notion that all that was invented in 1997 is complete nonsense. As an aside, let me explain that the hon. Member for Newark did not irritate me yesterday. I do not think that he was trying very hard to, either, and I would not want him to leave the room thinking that he had done so in some way, and feeling guilty. He did not irritate me at all.

There is no upper age limit in the Bill, and no requirement to carry a card. The hon. Gentleman made a point about that, too. However, there is a power to make exceptions and exemptions. That could be applied to any requirement on the register—such as obtaining a card, or providing the biometric, which, again, illustrates the fluidity of an enabling measure that the hon. Gentleman rightly suggests will mature over time.

I find the arguments put by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland perfectly acceptable; he is wrong, but the arguments are cogent and honest points. He says that if there are to be substantive changes in any of the key elements of the project as represented by the Bill, they should be included in a Bill. Sadly, trying to secure a primary legislation slot purely to change the age limit in a project might not be the most appropriate point of principle against secondary legislation on which to hang his hat.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The Minister would assist me greatly if he offered an example of the circumstances in which we would want to change the age specified in subsection (2). I cannot think of one that would be so significant that it would merit the scrutiny given to primary rather than secondary legislation.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I think that there will not be one, but that if there is any at all the pressure will be downwards, not upwards. Reasons may well be suggested for the age of 12 or 14, or even less, to be provided for. We are very comfortable with 16. I cannot see any compelling pressure developing, given the direction in which society is moving, for a rise to 18, 21 or beyond. I accept that point, but I do not think that the change in question to the framework of the Bill is so momentous that it would warrant primary rather than secondary legislation. I accept the point; I just do not agree with it.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The Minister makes a fair point when he says that the change would not be momentous in relation to this Bill; it would, however, be a significant change to the rights and obligations of the child. It would fundamentally strike at the nature of the parent-child and child-state relationships. That would deserve primary rather than secondary legislation.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

That is a fair point; I just think that the debate will take place elsewhere. We may determine in the future, for example, that children mature far earlier than they do now and that perhaps 14 rather than 16 is a more appropriate age at which to have a passport in one's own right. That might fundamentally transform the relationship between parent and child. The debate on the relevant measure would take place in that context and it would doubtless be primary legislation, as it would be fairly significant. That would act as a prompt, given that at least the initial stages are based on the implementation of biometric passports; but the debate would already have taken place on that significant and perhaps momentous change to legislation. I cannot necessarily envisage the age for passports for individuals going down to 12.

Mr. Garnier rose—

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I sit down when I choose to, with the best will in the world.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

His Majesty.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

It is not a case of His Majesty. It is just the way things work, and I was in the middle of a sentence.

I do not think that what the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland suggests is likely to happen, but, should it happen, there would need to be a correlation with the Bill. We are quite comfortable about that happening through the affirmative procedure of secondary legislation.

It should be borne in mind too—I shall let the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland respond, and we shall finish our conversation before I start a new one—that we have shifted from the negative procedure provided for by the previous Bill to the affirmative procedure in the present Bill simply on the issue in question. It is not a wide constitutional debate but a narrow issue, important though it is, involving age.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The Minister has twice said—I thought I had not followed him correctly the first time—that 16 is the age at which individual passports are available. My understanding, which is borne out by my family's experience, is that children can be given an individual passport at birth. Will he explain that?

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Children under 16 can apply only through their parents; they are individual passports, but they can be applied for only by the parents. That is why I was specific about individuals applying for their own passport as distinct from parents applying for the family. The hon. Gentleman spoke about uncoupling the link between child and parent, but only after the age of 16 can children apply in their own capacity rather than through their parents.

Patrick Mercer (Conservative, Newark)

Does the Minister foresee the bill for identity cards for a large family with several children aged between 16 and 18 falling entirely upon the parents once the register has done its full term? Is there likely to be a reduction in the cost of identity cards for 16 to 18-year-olds?

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said on Second Reading that, along with capping the price of ID cards, we would return before the parliamentary process had run its course with indications on concessions and other aspects of the fee regime. A later clause deals with the fee regime, and we will doubtless return to the subject.

The point made about the national children's database is entirely fair, but the database serves an entirely different purpose from the national identity register. It is clear from the Bill that the national identity register is a stand-alone database. The children's database aims to improve services for children, with an emphasis on early intervention for those with special needs, and it will improve the sharing of information between practitioners—for example, in education and health—to prevent problems from escalating. However, it is quite distinct from the objectives of the ID card scheme. It is a stand-alone scheme. Many people, including those between the ages of 16 and 18 referred to by the hon. Gentleman, may have their details held on other Government databases, but that does not lessen the need for a separate identity card scheme, supported by its own register.

There are two aspects to the amendment. The age is linked in the first instance to the roll-out of individual passports from the age of 16. The hon. Gentleman wanted to change the age to 18, and fair arguments can be made for such a change, but we do not accept them. We would prefer the flexibility offered by the Bill. It is entirely fair to say that such a fundamental change should be made by primary legislation rather than secondary legislation, but we disagree. However, we have moved from the negative to the affirmative procedure, which is appropriate. The other outstanding point is that of going further, not using primary legislation but keeping the secondary legislation route and, for want of another phrase, making it super-affirmative, with a report and other elements coming first. Again, we would invoke that process when moving to compulsion, but we do not think that a super-affirmative procedure is necessary for this part of the Bill, and we would resist it.

The only other element that was raised is the flexibility of the scheme. Provisos are mentioned in paragraph 44 of the explanatory notes that could exclude people over a certain age from the requirement to register under clause 6(1) and clause 41(4), which between them give the power to apply compulsion to different groups and to make exceptions. The hon. Member for Newark was entirely fair to say that, for those aspects, the Bill will mature. I said yesterday that further work needed to be done—for instance, to capture those of an itinerant nature and so on. It is the same for vulnerable groups when it comes to the interview and the biometrics.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I would not have intervened, but the Minister said that he was addressing the final point. Will he answer a point that I raised? When people are registered at birth, will any of those details go on the register; or will that happen only when they reach the age of 16, or if they are prescribed individuals?

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I will address that point before I sit down.

The hon. Member for Newark made a point about the interviewing process and the capture of biometric data from the vulnerable—he mentioned his mother today and his father, I think, yesterday—and it explains precisely why there is flexibility in the Bill to talk about exemptions and exceptions. We need to work through those details.

I am not sure about all the details of the process of retina/iris deterioration that takes place as we grow older, but I can see, intuitively, that there may be some deterioration. Clearly, our skin withers a bit, but it is still appropriate to capture fingerprints. Hon. Members should also bear it in mind that, for many people, the 10-year cycle will map the deterioration that eventually happens to us all, and we will need to deal with that towards the end of the process.

If someone has been on the register for 20 years, there will be sufficient established security about their identity, given all the data that will have been captured in two trawls over that period, to lessen the requirement for biometrics and all the other processes. We are looking at that element of the capture process, and that is what the first piece of research that we issued on the biometric trials was about; it was not about the data, but about the physicality and the environmental dimensions involved in data capture.

Clause 2(4) gives the power to add registrable facts in relation to people who are not entitled to be entered. That is not a rule, strictly, on registering from birth, but it could, for example, be used to create entries for rising 15s—that was the phrase used by some hon. Member, although I cannot remember who—to prepare the way for registration at 16. In its strictest interpretation, ''not entitled'' means starting to capture information on someone before they are 16; it is not the intention to have a 15 or 16-year tail, with people registering on the national database at birth and subsequently completing the exercise at 16. However, there is scope and flexibility for details of rising 15s to be so added in preparation for those people being added at 16.

That was a lengthy explanation, but I think that I have captured most of the points that were raised. We are comfortable with 16 and with the process of change at 16, should we take that path. We would resist a super-affirmative procedure and, in that context, all the amendments. However, in the spirit of harmony, good will and humour that characterises the Committee as it continues to trundle along, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

May I briefly put a few more thoughts on the record? The Minister's speech has stimulated my thought processes, which was careless of him, and I trust that he will not make a habit of it. That is not an accusation that I usually level at Ministers.

What will be the implications of lowering the age at which a person might be placed on the register? That should be given further consideration. There are several reasons why that could be problematic and why it would deserve primary rather than secondary legislation.

Who would be liable for any fee? Who would be liable in the event that there was a refusal to provide data? Presumably that would be a criminal offence, but would the child be liable for prosecution, or would liability attach to the parent?

Would the child, in his or her own right, be entitled to make an application under clause 1(5)(h) for information about the number of times that applications had been made for access to the register in respect of them?

In recent years, there has been useful clarification about the contractual capacity of children: basically, they have very little until they reach 16 and thereafter they have full contractual capacity. From memory, when I studied law in Scotland girls got contractual capacity at 12 and boys at 14. We have standardised all that, which is why a change of this sort could open up a can of worms that would bring with it significant questions deserving of primary rather than secondary legislation.

Patrick Mercer (Conservative, Newark)

It might interest the Committee to know that there has been a major incident on the London underground and the whole of the underground is suspended. As far as we know, there has been a collision and an explosion of some sort at Liverpool street, which has meant—forgive me for digressing, Mr. Hood—that a number of fire alarms have been triggered, due to a power surge, in other underground stations. The Metropolitan police have declared this a major incident. On that note, I will excuse myself in due course if I may, and leave my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough to continue.

First, the Minister has failed to explain to me whether the information needed on the register from birth will be required and how parents will be required to pay for children under 18. I do not understand why an upper age limit cannot be introduced, because if it were introduced it would be cheaper and would save time and expense—and there will be an opportunity cost in so doing.

Secondly, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made his points extraordinarily well. We need guards and protections in the Bill to ensure that any further alterations to the provisions therein are laid before both Houses of Parliament. In the face of the fact that the Minister has failed to convince me on this matter, I fear I must seek to divide the Committee.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 5, Noes 10.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I beg to move amendment No. 13, in clause 2, page 2, line 45, leave out 'the prescribed period' and insert

'a period of 31 days'.

Jimmy Hood (Labour, Lanark and Hamilton East)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 14, in clause 2, page 2, line 46, at end insert 'or'.

No. 15, in clause 2, page 3, line 2, leave out from 'period' to end of line 4.

No. 187, in clause 2, page 3, line 4, at end insert

'or,

(d) he is a citizen of an European Union Member State with an approved idenitity document issued by that state.'.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I want to set the discussion about these amendments in context.

Listening to the Minister during the last debate, one might have thought that the Government were going to do something attractive to the country as a whole. They say that only those who are entitled to be on the register will be registered, as if it were a privilege to be caught up in this great database.

In every aspect of clause 2 the words ''entitled'' or ''entitlement'' are to be found. For instance:

''An entry must be made into the Register for every individual who . . . is entitled to be entered''

and:

''The individuals entitled to be entered in the Register are—every individual who has attained the age of 16 and, without being excluded under subsection (3) from an entitlement to be registered, is residing at a place in the United Kingdom''.

Subsection (3), with which we are particularly concerned, states:

''Regulations made by the Secretary of State may provide that an individual residing in the United Kingdom is excluded from an entitlement to be registered''.

There will be two classes of person in this country: those who are fortunate enough to be entitled to be registered on this great database, containing information that will swish around the Government system; and those poor unfortunates who will be beyond the pale. That includes foreigners, for example, or people who are not in the country for more than three months, or for another period prescribed by the Secretary of State by regulations that we have yet to see. They shall not be entitled to be on the register; they will not be entitled to carry with them, if they so desire, this great piece of technology.

The first reason that the Government gave for entitling us to go, or granting us the privilege of going, on the register was that we would thus be the greater protected from terrorism. They then said that if the protection was not from terrorism, it was from crime, and if it was not crime, it was now from fraud. Those are the reasons why the Government say that we are so pleased to be entitled to go on the register.

What about those who are to be excluded? What about if one is

''residing in the United Kingdom in exercise of an entitlement to remain there that will end less than the prescribed period after it was acquired''?

Let us forget about whether that is good English, and let us see what the provision means. As I understand it, those people who come to this country either as tourists or as business visitors, but who have a visa to stay in the country for no more than three months, will not be entitled—poor things—to go on the register. They are the very people who might not care whether they have the entitlement, and who might not be the least interested in the preservation of our institutions and our way of life. They may be terrorists, serious criminals or the sort of people who wish to defraud our benefit system.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

On the subject of terrorism, it is interesting to learn that since the events of 9/11, the emphasis has been placed on that very group—those who want to enter the United States for such a period. Everyone will know if they have visited the United States, that a photograph is taken of oneself, and that one's biometric data are stored. That is what has been done to combat the threat of terrorism in the United States. If the Bill is trying to do anything to help us crack down on terrorism, leaving out that important group of people who visit our country for a three-month period is a mistake, and it does nothing to help us combat terrorism.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

My hon. Friend is entirely right. Let us face it, it is not a new argument. It is not a surprise that he has brought out from his briefcase this morning; it is an assertion and a fact that has been in the public record and in front of us for the past four or five years. We have the experience of not only New York, Washington DC and the plane crash in Philadelphia on 11 September 2001, but Madrid and any number of other terrible terrorist outrages. If the Government are trying to persuade us that we, the privileged few, who are entitled to be registered on this great database will feel the greater protection because of what this beneficent Government are giving to us, they fool themselves if they do not fool us.

Amendment No. 13 would specify a period of, broadly, a calendar month. I invite the Government to explain what on earth they think they are up to. It is all very well for them to say, through their various Ministers and spokesmen, that this will be a great boon to the UK—to all of us who are fearful that another terrorist incident will take place—and that the register and ID card schemes will give us greater protection, but they are leaving open a most obvious door for potential terrorists to come into our country. Do we imagine that, somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan or north-west Pakistan, or somewhere in the far reaches of the middle east, those who wish our country ill and intend to create havoc through terrorist activity will be in the least bit bothered that if they stay in our country for longer than ''the prescribed period'' they will be entitled to be logged on to the register? They must be quivering in their caves. If the Government wish us to take them seriously in fighting against terrorism by means of this ID register, they will have to provide us with better arguments than that it is an entitlement for us but it is not an entitlement for those who wish to come here for only a short period.

Let us consider benign visitors—those who are genuine tourists or genuinely visiting for business reasons—and who will stay in our country for a shorter time than the prescribed period, which the amendment sets at 31 days. How can they be assured that they will not be the subject of suspicion, and that they can go about their lawful business without being hindered as they enter museums, churches or railway stations? How will they be able to demonstrate that they fall outside the Government's suspicion of potential terrorism? Presumably, the only way that they will be able to do that is by producing their own national identity card, and unless that card is of the same sort as ours—unless it can be scanned and read by a police officer at a police station—it will be utterly useless in our country, although they use it in their own country. If the clause is not amended, the Government will open up huge potential for offending visitors to our country who are here for a legitimate purpose, while at the same time failing to protect us from the threat of terrorism, which they claim is one of the major purposes of the ID register and ID card scheme.

Amendment No. 14 would add ''or'' at the end of subsection (3)(a), so that each of paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) are alternatives. I would be interested to hear from the Government why paragraphs (a) and (b) are thought to be conjunctive whereas paragraphs (b) and (c) are alternatives.

Amendment No. 15 would leave out paragraph (c). The arguments that hang from that are the same as those that I have deployed in relation to the earlier amendments.

I am sure that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland will have something to say about amendment No. 187. However, the point that must be made here is that the Government are promising something with one hand while failing to provide the means by which it can be fulfilled with the other. They utterly fail to understand the lacuna in the Bill, and it utterly fails to live up to their intentions.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I want to pick up the points made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough. It is important to recognise that, according to the British Tourist Authority, some 24 million overseas visitors come to the United Kingdom each year. That is a hefty swathe of individuals who will not be subject to many of these regulations or to requirements such as having to carry an ID card.

Let me give three examples of cases of terrorism in the past 15 years to demonstrate on the basis of different acts of terrorism that the ID card and the exemption that appears in the Bill would have done nothing to prevent such acts, and indeed that the Bill and ID card scheme will not do anything.

The first example will be familiar to hon. Members: the ricin attack Some of the key members of the terrorist cell involved in that incident came into the country in the few months before the attack to activate the cell, to lead it and to take it to its next step. Those individuals would not have been covered by the ID scheme, and the attack would not have been prevented. My second example is the English department of the IRA or Provisional IRA, which bombed London and many other parts of the United Kingdom for many years until the mid-1990s, using operatives from the Republic of Ireland. As we know from the free trade area—

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The common travel area.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

My hon. and learned Friend corrects me. Individuals coming from the common travel area would not have been required to carry ID cards, so those key members of some of the IRA's most active cells would not have been prevented by the ID card scheme from carrying out their tasks.

Thirdly, there were those who assisted the IRA in other areas, such as Germany, where there were bombs at bases, or Gibraltar. How will British targets abroad, such as those in Turkey, be protected by the scheme? All those examples illustrate the way in which terrorists exploit gaps in systems. They do not go for the leafy, middle class areas where we all live by the rules and they can be spotted; they exploit the areas in our regulation and society where they will not be spotted, and where they will be allowed to get away with their activities.

When we make more and more exemptions among those obliged to carry the ID card, including, for example, people who are seeking asylum, we should realise what that means: it is creating ever more gaps that can be exploited by terrorists. The hon. and learned Member for Redcar (Vera Baird) shakes her head, but if she can explain to me how terrorism will be excluded from the activities of 24 million people, I shall be delighted. I cannot understand how those who are currently excluded will stop being a threat. Millions of visitors, as well as the 840,000 Irish citizens who live in this country, are excluded, and we should not forget it. It is important for the Minister to take on board the fact that gaps in the regulations will ultimately be exploited by terrorists. If we are going to introduce a system, it must be more robust than this one. I do not believe that it is possible to make it more robust, so I do not believe that it is a system worth having.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for favouring us with his thoughts on that subject, not least because I had not noticed that amendment No. 187 was one of mine until the hon. and learned Member for Harborough mentioned it. This is a probing amendment; if it were anything else it would have rather more substance. Its purpose is to tease out some of the Government's thinking on reciprocity and to float the idea that, if we are to have the scheme, there might be merit in constructing it in such a way that it is not a hindrance to the free movement of labour, in particular, in the European Union. There must be some scope under current arrangements for reciprocal arrangements, so will the Minister tell us his thinking on that?

I am broadly sympathetic to the Conservative amendments, given the inconsistency between the Government's stated aims in relation to terrorism and the period that has been prescribed. The problem is that the difficulties are the same, whether the period is 31 days or three months. It is simply a question of where one draws the line.

Notwithstanding everything that I said about regulatory powers, I wonder whether it might be preferable for the period to be set in regulation in this instance, as it might have to be altered with some urgency and as circumstances dictate. One might even consider reducing it at some stage to less than 31 days.

Those are merely thoughts, and I do not by any means have a closed mind on the question whether 31 days is the right period. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Let me start with the hon. Gentleman's penultimate point. We entirely accept that if we can move to a common specification across Europe on ID cards, we can then have reciprocity and reach the stage where we do not have to register all EU nationals living in the country for more than three months. We are not, however, near that stage. We have vowed to make progress on the issue during our EU presidency, but it is very early days. In the longer term, we seek to reach a stage at which the card could be used as the document for travel within the EU. Such things must spring at least from elements of standardisation, before we can move to reciprocity, but the points that he made are entirely fair.

Under current EU law, as I understand it, European economic area nationals and their families cannot be forced to register before the end of that three-month period. That is simply the way it is under the current directive. Even if it were not, I would prefer a prescribed period to be included in the Bill rather than defined in regulations. That implies support for the hon. Gentleman's last point. Indeed, I believe that he is right in that regard. The Bill does not prescribe a period of three months, but we are saying that we will define three months as the prescribed period.

The hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) might be right about tourism, but he is wrong about all the ins and outs of things that happen at our ports. In 2003, a total of some 91 million people arrived at UK ports, of whom 64 million were British, 15 million were EEA nationals, and 12 million were foreign nationals subject to immigration controls. Let us take those figures in reverse. By the time we implement the e-borders system—[Interruption.] I did not name it; the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland should not smile. By the time we implement the e-borders system in 2008, the biometric details of every one of those 12 million foreign nationals subject to immigration—in other words, visa nationals—will be captured before they leave their port of departure, as in America, and we will have that information about them.

On the modernised, high-tech version of embarkation controls, although I want to avoid going down the road of yah-boo politics, I should say that embarkation controls were lifted in part by the Conservative Government and completed by this Government, so the gap will be filled. It will take time. It cannot happen instantly, but it is not helpful—

It being twenty-five minutes past Ten o'clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at One o'clock.

Identity Cards Bill - Standing Committee D

Identity Cards Bill

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I have two matters of concern and interest to tell the Committee. The usual channels have indicated that the Programming Sub-Committee will meet immediately after the consideration of the Bill is adjourned. Committee members need to be aware that that Committee may sit for two hours, although that is not necessary. Thereafter, any of its findings are debateable for a further half hour by the full Committee. That debate may take place this afternoon, although I suspect that it will take place, more properly and more probably, at the start of proceedings on Tuesday morning.

The other issue that I feel obliged to raise arises out of this morning’s events. The Home Secretary and shadow Home Secretary have made it abundantly plain that it is far too early to attribute cause or blame. Matters are still in a very evolutionary phase. I would therefore regard it as highly reprehensible if any Member from the Front or Back Benches sought, at this stage, to associate those events in any way with the legislation before us this afternoon.

Clause 2 - Individuals entered in Register

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following amendments: No. 14, in page 2, line 46, at end insert ‘or’.

No. 15, in page 3, line 2, leave out from ‘period’ to end of line 4.

No. 187, in page 3, line 4, at end insert

‘or,

(d)he is a citizen of an European Union Member State with an approved identity document issued by that state.’.

Hopefully, during interventions I dealt sufficiently with the points about reciprocity, standards and all the other elements relating to the European Union, so I shall simply dwell on the lead amendment and amendment No. 14.

As I read them, paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of clause 2(3) are not meant to be joined. The point made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) in amendment No. 14 is that paragraph (a) should be linked to paragraph (b). He queried the “or” at the end of paragraph (b). As I understand it, it is (a) or (b) or (c), so there is no need for an “and”.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Or an “or”.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Yes. The subsection flows; we do not have to put “or”s all over the place—the “or” is automatically assumed. It was interesting earlier to hear a very eminent lawyer attack the English language as it appears in UK legislation, but I shall let that pass. I am told that the legalese is such that the “or” at the end of paragraph (b) implies an “or” at the end of paragraph (a). It is “or”, “or”, “or”; the three are not linked together by an “or” or an “and”.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I cannot think whom the Minister was referring to just then. My complaint about the language related to the use of the word “less”, and not to the absence or otherwise of the word “or”.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I do not see how I could misread amendment No. 14, which says in all clarity—that is quite unusual for some of the amendments—“at end insert ‘or’.” That is relatively clear. If I have missed the point, we shall perhaps return to it subsequently.

Amendment No. 13 has substance; it would give an entitlement to an identity card to any foreign national who had leave to remain in the UK for more than one month. However, as I said when I made my point about reciprocity, European legislation prevents the UK from requiring European economic area nationals and their family members to register before they have been resident for three months.

In addition, I do not consider that such a short period would be helpful, either to the individual or for controlling immigration, even if it were legally possible. As I said earlier, some 91 million people arrive at UK ports yearly—that is the latest figure, from 2003. Of those, 64 million were British, 15 million were European economic area nationals and 12 million were foreign nationals subject to immigration control.

I dwelt this morning on the e-borders programme to be implemented for 2008 onwards. It will capture the 12 million foreign nationals who are subject to immigration control and visa restrictions. Clearly, in 2003, many of them will have been short-term visitors—tourists or business people—and they will be in future, and I do not see the point of providing under the Bill that a foreign national coming here for, say, a six-week holiday should be expected to register and obtain an ID card or, indeed, have an entitlement so to do.

The Bill allows us to prescribe a period after which foreign nationals would have an entitlement to register and be issued with an ID card. It is likely that that period may be three months, after which we will require them to obtain a card. However, we need to retain a power to prescribe the period so that, should it prove necessary to extend or reduce it, we have the liberty to do so. That is why the period of three months is not in the Bill.

There are good reasons for the three-month period. At present, the UK admits short-term visitors for up to six months, but internationally it is more common for people to be admitted for three months for a short visit. In the USA, for example, visitors are admitted for 90 days, while in Europe three months is the norm for a short visit. There is little point in requiring people visiting the UK for such a short period as 31 days to register and obtain an ID card, and to meet the costs of so doing. However, we clearly need to draw a line somewhere and it is more logical to expect that anyone here for more than three months is resident on a longer-term basis—as a student, for example—when the need to register and obtain an ID card would seem much more sensible. The three-month rule would capture the 840,000 Irish Republic nationals to whom the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Wallace) referred.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

The Minister talked about how there may be scope for the ID card to be used as a form of travel document in Europe. Leading on from that rationale, I suspect that some visitors who come from Europe to the UK with an EU-type ID card could enter the United Kingdom using that card rather than having to jump on to our ID card system. I accept that I am looking forward a little, but if that were the case, would there be separate registers or some form of EU-wide register?

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

That system may indeed prevail in future, but only within the context of the reciprocity, standards and data-sharing elements that clearly do not prevail at present and to which the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) referred. At present, after three months’ residence, EU nationals will equally have to register and secure a card. The speculative future outlined by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) may well prevail, but it will do so on the basis of similar—if not identical—standards and reciprocity in data-sharing and the format of the ID card and registration system. We are nowhere near that at the moment. Indeed, even those who have moved in the direction of limited biometrics on ID cards have, like the Spanish example, done so only provincially and not nationally. Things may well move in that direction, but reciprocity in respect of EU nationals using their ID cards will not prevail until all those other elements are in place. I think that that is clear and has some logic to it.

Sadly, regardless of whether those who seek to do us harm have been here 10 days, 31 days, one month, three months or six months, it is unlikely that the situation would be better if they registered after 31 days—but there must be a cut-off point. The commonly accepted cut-off point in the international domain between short and long visits is either 90 days or three months, and we consider that three months is appropriate. To provide flexibility and given as we all understand that this is enabling legislation, there is a prescribed period in the Bill, which will leave us the latitude either to increase or decrease that dimension—more likely decrease, if anything. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment because, in the context of the Bill and its enabling framework, we consider it otiose.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

This has been a fairly constructive debate. I should like to light upon five broad areas. First, perhaps not realising the significance of what he said, the Minister mentioned that reciprocity with the European Union is our aim: the Government want a common standard of identity card, which must imply a common system of identity registration. We do not know what the enabling regulations will be—still less does the Minister—but if the Government have their way in due course there will be, if we are to take him at his word, some sort of rolling out, to use his favourite expression, across the 25 nations of the European Union of a standard identity card and an underlying data-accumulation system into which each member state will be able to dip in order to enjoy reciprocity and ensure that all those who are registered are who they say they are and that their personal data is truthful.

The Minister said candidly that this is an enabling Bill—I applaud him for that—and, necessarily, as with all such Bills, it is difficult to know precisely what he intends to enable. We do not know the shape or detail of the various provisions that the Home Secretary will have power to create as secondary legislation if this Bill becomes an Act. However, since the Minister is bound up in that necessary vagueness, he would like the Bill to remain necessarily vague. So that is the answer; we are not to have the degree of certainty that I suggest is the better way to produce legislation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre produced some detailed figures on the numbers of people coming in and out of the United Kingdom during the course of a year and I think that the Minister confirmed those.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

With respect, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre cited a series of numbers about tourists coming in and out of the country; he did not—and did not claim to—quote figures that include everybody who comes in and out. Those are the ones that I quoted.

While I am on my feet, and purely for the record, I should add that it is interesting how the hon. and learned Member for Harborough misquotes and misinterprets what I say. I have sought not to rise to such provocation. What he said in his opening two paragraphs bore no relation to what I said; nor can any such extrapolation be made other than by him.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I have done no more than to draw reasonable inferences from the words that came from the Minister’s mouth. If my inferences and remarks are disobliging, I am sorry for that. However, the Minister cannot escape responsibility. It may not be his wish, but it is his duty to deal with the conduct of this Bill, which is a flawed piece of legislation, as we are endeavouring to point out. Others much wiser than me pointed that out with far greater vigour and precision on Second Reading, as have people outside the House. The clear implication of what the Minister said and of the text of the Bill is as I have suggested. It is up to others to agree or disagree, but that is my opinion based on the information that I know.

Before the Minister rose to his feet just now, I was saying that my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre produced some detailed figures about people coming in and out of the United Kingdom and, as the Minister correctly said—and as I would have said had he not interrupted—those were confined to tourists. The Minister told us that there were approximately 64 million visitors—or that number of journeys made—to the UK. We could call them crossings of the border, and they might have been undertaken by sea, air, or train. Of those, 15 million originated in the European economic area and 12 million involved what were called foreign nationals: those who required a visa to enter. I think that the overall total is 91 million.

So, a huge number of people already come in and out of this country. We assume that as mobility across Europe and the world becomes easier that number will grow. It must follow that the number of people who stay for less than three months will grow. Therefore, there is potential for problems to arise, as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre. He said that terrorists do not go for the obvious target but look for the weaknesses in the security and policing systems and in our institutions. That is where they go for.

I am no expert on security, unlike my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth, East and for Lancaster and Wyre, but it seems that this aspect of the Bill opens up an area of weakness, which the Government need to address. I accept that the Minister says that the three-month period is the best as far as he and his Government colleagues are concerned; other countries use other numbers. However, we must understand that if an arbitrary time limit is set below which registration on the data system and ownership of an identity card are not required, people cannot then say that the Bill and all that it will enable—whatever that might be—will provide a bulwark against terrorism, serious crime, other crime, illegal working or breaches of our immigration rules. It simply does not stack up. The Government must understand that if they wish to push the Bill through in all its vagueness, they must tell us precisely what they think the real limits of its capabilities are. As the Bill is currently presented to us, that has not been done.

I will not detain the Committee over the fascinating discussion that the hon. and academic Minister—the former admissions tutor—and I had about the use of the word “or”. Clause 2(3)(a) states:

“remain there that will end less than the prescribed period after it was acquired”.

I gently suggest to him that a better way of dealing with that would have been to have used “sooner” or “earlier” rather than “less”. That was the point I was making about the language; it was not in relation to the question of “or”. That is a side point and one that can be dealt with by an English master in due course. For the moment, I will content myself with registering my concern about the issues that we have discussed and stating that I do not believe that the Government have adequately dealt with the matter. I trust that we may be able to deal with it on Report, if not now. For now, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I beg to move amendment No. 125, in clause 2, page 3, line 5, leave out subsection (4).

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 156, in clause 8, page 7, line 28, leave out subsection (5).

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

As has been observed several times, we are dealing with enabling legislation. Obviously, as a result there will be a certain vagueness in the language used. It is not anticipated, nor is it intended, that every scenario will be outlined in the Bill. That is a perfectly proper and legitimate way for the Government to proceed. I take no issue with it. However, in our view, clause 2(4) goes beyond what might be regarded as vague and creates a substantial loophole in the law. It offers the Secretary of State a range of powers that, although he might not intend to use them, go beyond what Parliament should allow.

Amendment No. 156 would have much the same effect in relation to the card as amendment No. 125 would have in relation to the ID register. We have been spared having too many debates on whether it is appropriate to use “must” instead of “may”, or “may” instead of “shall”. That is a deliberate tactic as far as I am concerned—although I cannot speak for anyone else. However, I mention in passing that clause 8(5) provides that an ID card “may” be issued to an individual who comes under the ambit of that measure, and I suggest that it would be more appropriate to replace that “may” with “shall”. It is possible for information to be held on the identity database without the individual concerned who is caught under clause 2(4) being aware of that. In these circumstances, the mandatory issue of a card might well be the best way of ensuring that somebody is aware that information on them is held on the database.

I shall address my principal remarks to clause 2(4). It is worth stating at the start that there has been some minor but noteworthy redrafting of that subsection. In the previous version of the Bill, it read:

“An entry for an individual may be made in the Register (whether or not he has applied to be, or is entitled to be, entered in it) if information capable of being recorded in an entry for him is otherwise available to be recorded.”

The current version is broadly similar, but the requirement is added that

“the Secretary of State considers that the addition of the entry to the Register would be consistent with the statutory purposes.”

That rider causes me much concern. Paragraph 25 of the explanatory notes describes a scenario with regard to the Secretary of State that is—properly and legitimately—envisaged. In relation to the holding of information on a failed asylum seeker where biometric information has been acquired for their asylum application, it is said that at the point at which the application is refused that person’s information should be added to the database. I do not have an issue with that; I think that it is not an unreasonable use of the provision, but I suggest that broader applications than that would be available to the Home Secretary.

In this morning’s sitting, the Minister said that this clause could be used if the Secretary of State thought it necessary to hold information on those who were rising 15 and who would not in the normal course of events yet be subject to the provisions of the legislation under subsection (2). We have no way of knowing who is to be added in this way. There is nothing in the Bill that would require the Home Secretary or any Minister to come to Parliament to seek approval for the addition of those people to the database. In the circumstances, it seems to me that that is a measure of discretion too far. That power is too wide. Although we would not in any way impugn the current holder of the office of Home Secretary—he is a decent and honourable man—we are bound, as parliamentarians, to have regard to the worst-case scenario. The day may come when somebody without the high standards and propriety of the current Home Secretary holds that office, and for him or her to be allowed to add people, by classification or individually, case by case as they arise, to the identity database seems a rather unnecessarily widely drawn power.

My other concern about the subsection is that it allows the importation into the identity database of information that has not been obtained specifically for the purpose of the compilation of the database. Earlier this week, the Minister kindly allowed a discussion with some of his officials and I discussed that point with them in relation to another part of the Bill. However, I am concerned that holding biometrical information that has not been specifically obtained by those charged with the compilation of the identity database could threaten that database’s integrity.

I return to an example that I used earlier this week: the use of fingerprints. The Minister may or may not be aware of a case in Scotland involving Shirley McKie, a former fingerprint officer with Strathclyde police; the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson) will be familiar with it. The case has raised substantial doubts about the proper and efficient conduct of the fingerprinting database employed by the Scottish Criminal Records Office.

There is a real difficulty if one seeks to import from another source information that has not been obtained for the purpose of the compilation of the database, and the consequences of the use of that information, which may subsequently turn out to be wrong, are severe for the rights and liberties of the individual who may be required to rely on the card.

Another thing occurs to me almost as I speak. There may be an obvious answer to it, but it is brought to my mind by the question of importing information. Perhaps the Minister will be able to give me an answer. It would be possible, given the drafting of subsection (4), to put a second entry in the identity database. It would not be the primary entry compiled on the basis of a visit to the ID card office, but one in which data imported from another part of the Government could be held. I may be completely wrong; I do not pretend that that point has been carefully researched. It came to my mind almost as I spoke. However, is there any barrier to there being more than one entry on the database register? If there is not, I think that it would improve the Bill if that express prohibition were put in it. Perhaps we shall consider that point at a later stage.

We all accept that enabling legislation is drafted widely. I believe, however, that the provision is too wide and that we would be failing in our duties as parliamentarians who scrutinise the Bill, if we allowed the Secretary of State the degree of latitude that it is possible for him—or her, at a future date—to take, if he or she were so minded.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

Will the Minister clarify clause 2(4), which states:

“An entry for an individual may be made in the Register”

under paragraphs (a) and (b)? Does “entry” mean a registrable fact or can it be other than a registrable fact as outlined under clause 1(5)? Does the provision give power to the Secretary of State to add extra information other than what is described at the beginning of subsection (5)? If the hon. Gentleman knows the answer, I shall not ramble on. However, if he does not, I can expand on why I fear such an outcome.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I do know, and I was about to explain to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland why paragraph (b) is so important. It concerns statutory purposes and all that flows from them are registrable facts, as determined and limited under the Bill.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am grateful to the Minister. If that is a fact, it would not allow extra information such as travel information or other matters to be added to the entry. If it did allow that, it would confirm the fears of those who said that entry on the database broadened out from verification of identity, as opposed to Big Brother tracking people throughout the United Kingdom after entry and so on. What the hon. Gentleman said goes some way to alleviate the fears that people may have.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I wish to pursue that point momentarily. If people were up to no good, the security services or the police would do far better by tracking their mobiles or conducting a credit card audit than by obtaining travel information about them. The provision is an important element, so we shall—shock, horror—resist the amendment. The point made by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre was discussed during proceedings on the previous Bill, which is why paragraph (b) is in this Bill. It is a safeguard in respect of statutory purposes and goes back to what I was saying in our deliberations on clause 1—lengthy, but enormous fun, though they were—about the assorted nature of statutory purposes, the public interest and registrable facts, and how they deliberately interlock.

Clause 2(4) is intended to provide the flexibility needed to allow the personal details that are already available to be recorded when it would be useful to have them on the register, despite the fact that the person is currently not entitled to register. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland cited a useful example. Moreover, those who apply for asylum are issued with an asylum registration card on which elements of biometrics are stored. If we remove someone because of a failed application, by definition that person is not entitled to register on the database and subsequently have a full ID card. However, it might be useful to have information on the database that the person with those biometrics has already been removed once, having applied for asylum status under the name, with which such biometrics are associated. That might be the way to go subsequent to a further application for asylum, for citizenship and ID cards.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I am grateful to the Minister. I suggest, however, that such examples could be covered by inclusion in a prescriptive order, not under the broad and general power under the Bill.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I understand that concern, but under the clause, by definition, the Secretary of State and the authorities—I was going to say “or his agents”, but that would just fire the conspiracy theorists—implicitly cannot go fishing for biometric or other data simply because the measure allows them to pop the information on the database once they have secured it, no matter how they have secured it. It is about processes outwith the process of registration for the ID card, where it might be useful to store those data on the database, even though the individual was not entitled at the time.

The hon. Gentleman suggests, as we suggested earlier this morning, that the passports for 16-year-olds can be processed months before their 16th birthday. I should add that that is all done under royal prerogative rather than by legislation, so it will not be found in any legislation anywhere. However, it might be useful if the UK Passport Service had that information to hand already, instead of having to wait until someone was 16 and one hour old, and therefore entitled to an ID card, before it was provided with that person’s permission and acquiescence—with all that I said earlier about the Data Protection Act 1998—and if the information was put into the database before the magic bewitching hour when that individual turned 16.

I emphasis that the clause is not intended to allow fishing; it should be understood entirely in the context of data from another legitimate source that could be stored on the database within the statutory purposes, and all that follows from that in terms of registrable facts; and it provides the flexibility to allow that data record to be created for an individual, even though that might be done prior to their due entitlement.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am sorry to labour the point, but I should like to address registrable facts, which the Minister assured us earlier were those to which the entry could be limited. His example of an individual coming back in after having been removed from the country is not a registrable fact. [Interruption.]

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I take the point, and I am sorry for intervening from a sedentary position.

The residency status is clearly defined in the Bill, as was elaborated on yesterday, and even the hon. and learned Member for Harborough found it in the end, despite an inquisitive interjection. That is a registrable fact, as are the biometrics that are captured currently by the asylum registration card system in terms of asylum seekers. That, plus the point at paragraph (b) on statutory purposes, and so on, provides an appropriate safeguard. However, we think that rising 15s, and those who are removed and may subsequently apply in other circumstances for asylum or entry, are useful areas for data that it would be a shame to miss because we were rigid, rather than more flexible, in our interpretations.

The ARC system has been enormously successful in capturing multi-applications—that is, those who apply in three or four different names, or who already have an extant application from elsewhere, or from within our own system. It would be useful if those elements were captured and flexible.

Paragraph (b), and all that flows from it in terms of that magic little phrase on statutory purposes, should give the assurance, which the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland seeks, that this is not a fishing and trawling exercise—I do not use those terms because he is from Orkney and Shetland—for the authorities to pick up any data that they want and bang them on the database just because they fancy them. The provision is not that broad or Orwellian; it is simply drawn in the terms that I have discussed.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The pleasant aspect of dealing with Bills such as this is that it is a change from fishing and trawling exercises.

I do not have any difficulty with the examples that the Minister gave, or the way that he gave them. He says that it might be useful to be able to hold these pieces of information, and he is right in that. There is a requirement on the Secretary of State to consider

“that the addition of the entry to the Register would be consistent with the statutory purposes.”

The Minister said that that is also helpful. However, no parliamentary scrutiny of the executive decision is involved and it is for the Secretary of State to decide that such things are consistent with the statutory purposes. There is no oversight and no way for Parliament even to know that the Secretary of State has made, or has been required to make, that decision.

We are dealing with vagueness heaped upon vagueness. The cumulative effect of the different levels of vagueness causes me concern. The statutory purposes outlined in clause 1 are broad to say the least, and necessarily so. Some of the registrable facts are broadly defined. Again, I remind the Committee of the concerns that I expressed yesterday about the broad definition in clause 1(5)(g). I am concerned that if one gives a broad power to the Secretary of State for broadly defined statutory purposes in relation to broadly defined registrable facts the net goes rather wide—to continue the Minister’s metaphor—in terms of the information that can be caught. I do not say that that is his intention or that of the Government, but the worst-case scenario is that the provision is wide.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I rise to make some minor points. First, the provision is not that wide, because we are talking about data that are already captured rather than sought and data that must comply with registrable facts. In terms of individuals and the use of this sort of power, the Information Commissioner provides oversight. He has a duty to report to Parliament on an annual basis. Therefore, it is not entirely accurate to say that there is no oversight or scrutiny of this, or any other power.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The Minister makes a good point about the Information Commissioner. I had not considered the possible role that he would have in this area, albeit that safeguard is one step removed. It is a cut-out and worthy of note.

I am concerned that this is not the only way in which this part of the Bill needs to be presented. It might be possible to give the power to the Government to make statutory instruments—secondary orders—to prescribe those people whose information would be held on the database under subsection (4). That would bring a degree of transparency and immediate parliamentary scrutiny, which is currently not present in the Bill.

I am not satisfied that we have covered the matter in its entirety. I raised a couple of points that the Minister has not dealt with. I do not necessarily criticise him for that, because I was raising them more or less as they entered my head. If he would have regard to the report of the Committee’s proceedings later, he might wish to drop me a note on the issue. Given that time is moving on and that we are still discussing clause 2, and mindful that we might wish to revisit the matter at a later stage, I do not want to press the amendment to a Division. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I beg to move amendment No. 16, in clause 2, page 3, line 10, at end insert—

‘(4A)Details of any entry made in the Register must be provided to the person in respect of whom the entry is made.’.

There was a brief discussion on this subject on the last occasion that the legislation was discussed in Committee. The Minister’s predecessor, the Chief Secretary, addressed questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Malins), who moved a similar amendment to the one currently under discussion. I did not find the Chief Secretary’s response on that occasion terribly illuminating, and I wonder whether the Minister will have a better go.

In dealing with the argument advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking, the Chief Secretary said:

“Such a provision”—

a measure on the provision of entries to the person in respect of whom the entry is made—

“is unnecessary because the Data Protection Act already holds general rules on notification rights. They have been very carefully considered and drafted in view of the underlying EU directive and they will apply to the ID cards scheme.”

He went on to say:

“So the rules are already in place”.—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 18 January 2005; c. 94]

We therefore have absolutely nothing to worry about.

No doubt the Minister thinks that that is all fine and dandy, but in respect of this new Bill in this new Parliament, we feel that we need far greater clarification from the Minister about the rights, or the absence of rights, among people who are the subject of information on the Government computer. Without such clarification, and without assurances that information about an individual will not be stored, added to or removed without his knowledge, the citizen will be in a position of insecurity.

This is not a complex point. It is straightforward: those who are the subject of Government-controlled information should have some knowledge of the fact that they are the subject of Government attention. I would like the Minister to explain briefly why proposed new subsection (4A) should not be added to the Bill.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

There is a lot of merit in what the hon. and learned Gentleman says, which chimed with the point that I made in relation to amending clause 8 and the requirement to let the person know, especially if information might be imported to the database from another source. It is important not only that the person is made aware of that, but that they can check the accuracy of the information.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I was chuckling to myself, because I read a little further in the Hansard that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough quoted. The hon. Member for Woking goes on to say:

“I have never understood the Data Protection Act. The only time when it has applied to me is when I have rung up Orange to ask about my daughter’s telephone bill and they have not told me about it even though she has asked me to ring; that is the usual story.”—[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 18 January 2005; c. 95]

That tickled me.

I wish to make two points. First, I must disappoint the hon. and learned Member for Harborough by simply repeating the now Chief Secretary’s earlier comments. Nothing has changed in terms of the Data Protection Act since the previous Bill was discussed in Committee. I have not read in detail the proceedings following the discussion that the hon. and learned Gentleman referred to, but importantly, even if there had been changes, we would still resist the amendment, because it is far too strict.

The Data Protection Act contains the normal caveats about practicability, national security, seeking to prevent or disrupt a crime and associated elements. Ifthe amendment were accepted, it would oblige us to tell every person about the details of their entry, regardless of whether they were under scrutiny for national security reasons, with all that that entails, or whether they were being dealt with as part of the prevention and detection of crime. Under the amendment, we would have to tell them everything. That cannot be what the hon. and learned Gentleman wants to prevail. As the Chief Secretary said when he was in my position, in many cases the entry will have been made at the individual’s request. The DPA already holds general rules on notification rights, with caveats on practicability, national security and the prevention and detection of crime.

Many people will know that they are registered, as they will have applied and been issued with the ID card. However, any person who is concerned that they may have been registered without their knowledge will have data subject and access rights under the DPA; that fuller position, which is rightly in place, covers what the hon. and learned Gentleman wants to do far better than the amendment does. The amendment is seriously deficient—I do not cast aspersions on drafting abilities—because it does not have the caveats and flexibilities that prevail in the DPA in terms of access to data.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

Will the Minister clarify whether there is any provision to prevent an employer who knows that a potential employee has an ID card from requesting a summary of what is on the register?

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

There is no provision for anyone to request and receive a summary of any item of data on the registration database. That is very clear and I have said it previously. The only “access” that anyone will get is as follows. If a person is registered as someone who seeks verification and has duly gone through that process, all they will receive is verification by those working with the database that the database verifies the facts presented by someone purporting to hold the identity of which those facts are part. No one is ever getting read-outs or hard copies of what is on the database, whether it is an employer or anybody else. No, employers cannot have a summary of what is on the database for any employee who may or may not have an ID card. That is clear.

Access, along with costs and technology and a bunch of other factors, will underpin our deliberations, but it must be access in the context of verification, not access in terms of hard copies of data or fishing exercises in the database carried out by assorted people to get what they want. All those elements and canards that I know are out there and are pursued constantly are not in the Bill. I urge the hon. Gentleman, as I did yesterday or Tuesday, to find the clause that confirms what he said, as well as the one that says everyone has to compulsorily carry a card and produce it at the request of the police force or anybody else.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

Whether the Bill is voluntary or not, some Labour Members have made it clear that they would like what the Minister describes to happen. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) mentioned yesterday that she would like to see such matters progress. It would be wrong for the Committee not to—

John Robertson (Labour, Glasgow North West)

She said the opposite.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I stand corrected. I am trying to say, however, that if this is enabling legislation that could lead to the introduction of compulsory ID cards, it would be wrong for us not to bring the matter up as we are discussing things.

We are dealing with the Bill and the ability of the security forces and the police, and so on, to carry out many of their operations to make our world safer, and they will not be able to do that until we live in a compulsory environment. If I can just get back to the point—

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. The hon. Gentleman may be able to get back to it later, but this is an intervention, not a speech.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I was about to intervene on the intervention, Mr. Gale, but I thought better of it.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. Let me explain myself to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East. I think that I am right in saying that this is his first Committee. Although he may not have gleaned it from the behaviour of some other Members, an intervention is intended to be incisive and brief and should relate directly to the point that is being made. Once the Minister has taken his seat again, if the hon. Gentleman seeks to catch my eye and expand on the points that he wishes to raise, he may just get lucky.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Thank you, Mr. Gale. I agree entirely with the point made by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East. Collectively, it is our job—and certainly the job of the Opposition—to ensure detailed scrutiny of the Bill. However, that must be done on the basis of points that are relevant in the first instance to the amendment; I do not mean that in a patronising way. The points that are made should be germane to the substance of the Bill and not to what will or will not prevail three Parliaments down the line or to something in some newspaper or other. That is the only reason why I gently chide the hon. Gentleman and ask him to find the clause that says that ID cards are to be carried compulsorily and need to be presented, and that the police are to have all these new powers.

The amendment has been presented in the context of access and people receiving summaries, hard copies or whatever of the data, but that is not the purpose of the database. Its purpose is to verify and substantiate ID and no more. The serious point is that even if the gist of the amendment were acceptable to us—and it is not—we would not accept it in its current form because of the absence of those normal flexibilities under law that prevail in the DPA. Such things are about practicability, so that the power is not open-ended and comprehensively permissive. Crucially, elements about national security and the work of our assorted police forces are not in the amendment, so that makes the thing flawed anyway.

As I said, the Data Protection Act is a specific measure about people’s access to assorted Government and other databases. It is specifically about those areas and nothing more, and they are a far better place in which to accumulate people’s powers and rights on access to information held about them. Those issues should not be tagged on in the way that the amendment proposes.

I am sure that I have not come even remotely close to convincing the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, but I have tried. For all the reasons that I have given, I ask him to seek leave withdraw the amendment.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

First, I thank you for your guidance, Mr. Gale. As a junior member of the Committee, I have to learn the tools of the trade.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

My hon. Friend is not a junior member of this Committee; he is a member of this Committee. We are all of equal status. He should not feel that simply because he has come into Parliament in 2005, his rights to speak up for his constituents are any less than anybody else’s. The Minister may be a Minister of the Crown, but he is also a Member of Parliament. We are all equal here.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for that vote of confidence.

I appreciate what the Minister has said, and I understand all the aspects that he mentioned. I apologise if I did not make my case clear. I was trying to ask whether an employer, organisation or human resources department could demand a printout. Could they tell somebody asking for a job that they were not sure about their background and get that person to pay £10 to the Home Office or the organisation from which the data could be obtained? We have established that that would be the cost. Could the employer make the person get a summary of what was on the register so that they could qualify further their knowledge about the person’s background, other than what was on the ID card?

That was the scenario to which I was referring. I was not suggesting that organisations and employers would somehow be able to have direct access to the register, as the Minister suggested. We have already established that there are strict firewalls, for want of a better word, to prevent that from happening.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Briefly, taken in that regard, the individual can clearly pass that information on if they give consent. If I misinterpreted the absence of the individual and their consent, I apologise; I took the scenario to be the employer going to the verification process or the database to seek the data. Consent of the individual is paramount in that regard, rather than otherwise. If the individual provides the consent, they can stand up various aspects of their identity with the employer. That can happen only in relation to very limited data—the front end of the data in terms of establishing who the individual is—and only with consent. That is the key point.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The last few minutes of the exchange have proved interesting and useful. They demonstrate the number of concerns that individual members of the Committee and members of the public will have about the way in which the legislation has been framed.

There will be circumstances where some employees, particularly those of the state, may be required, as a term of their contract of employment, to provide details of residential status and so on to their potential employer. There might not be direct access by the employer to the database, but, possibly under the contract of employment, there will be a requirement for the employee to provide details.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Certainly there is such provision in the context of previous asylum and immigration legislation, but only in that limited field.

The hon. and learned Gentleman will know that in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill currently wending its way through our parliamentary process there are even more demands on the employer to stand up, and to regularly touch base with, their employees in terms of that residency status. Such provision exists, but it is not germane to this Bill.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The Minister makes the point for me. It is one that I made earlier. Things will become a matter of practice and of routine. If people want to do anything in the United Kingdom in future, they will have to flash-and-go; people will have to show their identity card. People with whom we have intercourse—Members will know what I mean—will require the presentation of the identity card, because it will act as the instant verification machinery for all that is stored about them in the Government’s machine. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East did us a service today. He opened up yet another area where access creep has been revealed. This little debate has taught us that there is bound to be a growing change in the balance between the individual and the state. The Minister can do nothing to prevent us from gaining that impression.

Nick Palmer (Labour, Broxtowe)

Can the hon. and learned Gentleman give an example of an item of information that an employer might ask for that would be on the identity register database and is not currently on another database?

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

If I am quick enough in turning the pages of the Bill, I will. I think that paragraph 9 of schedule 1 might contain the answer. I overheard my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre say something.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

One thing that we talked about yesterday in relation to the register was the police national computer number. That would be on the register and, if I am not mistaken, an individual requesting it would be given their PNC number.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I hope that that at least provides the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Dr. Palmer) with one example. There may be others and if he wishes me to write him an essay on the subject, I will have to let him down.

I want to focus briefly on what the Minister said. He highlighted the vagueness of the way in which the Bill is drafted. There is a lack of balance between what the Government call entitlement and the order-making power. I do not need to detain the Committee further with my worries. I certainly will not press the amendment to a Division.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I have one query, which my hon. and learned Friend might answer. In other legislation there is protection for the individual, such as the protection that does not allow an employer to ask a female employee whether she was intending to have a baby. While it is not compulsory in the financial sector in certain parts of the country to register to vote or to have a certain credit record, such matters are hard because financial institutions operate a flash-and-go system. People are not forced to have financial records, but if they do not it is difficult to receive a loan. Will the Government put in place a measure that will protect individuals from being forced by commercial convenience to disclose information?

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I do not know is the short answer, and I do not suppose that the Minister does either. That is what worries me so much about the Bill. As we have said, it is a Christmas tree on which as yet all sorts of undescribed or undefined things will be hung. I shall not press the amendment to a Division, but I wish it to be on the record that Opposition Members have grave concerns about how the Bill is developing and how the Government are incapable of responding to our worries. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 3 - Information recorded in Register

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I beg to move amendment No. 19, in clause 3, page 3, line 25, leave out paragraph (b).

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 20, in clause 3, page 3, line 27, leave out paragraph (c).

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Although I anticipated a Division on clause 2 stand part, it did not occur. I wholly disapprove of clause 2 and, had there been a Division, I would have voted no.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

Order. The hon. and learned Gentleman is entitled to call a Division if he so wishes. But the moment has rather passed.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Precisely. You spotted that too, Mr. Gale. That is why I expressed my opposition to clause 2 remaining part of the Bill, at the outset of my remarks on amendment No. 19. I do not think that members of the Committee are now in doubt about what I think of clause 2. However, the arithmetic of the Committee would have defeated me even if I had raised my voice earlier.

The amendments would delete subsection (1)(b) and (c), which cover

“information of a technical nature for use in connection with the administration of the Register”

and

“information of a technical nature for use in connection with the administration of arrangements made for purposes connected with the issue or cancellation of ID cards”.

The provisions describe two of the four categories of information—indeed, the only information—that may be recorded in the register. What does that mean, and why?

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I should like to know, too.

The amendments are not the widest drawn proposals but, judging by their introduction by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, they must be probing amendments to find out the type of information. In fact, they could be wrecking amendments if they were accepted, because the information to which they refer is crucial to the proper running of the system.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

If they had been wrecking amendments, they would not have been tabled, and if they had been tabled as such they would not have been selected.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

The hon. and learned Gentleman is extremely perceptive.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I am not an IT expert, but if I can I will explain to the hon. and learned Gentleman some of the information to which these subsections refer. As he says, paragraph (c) refers to

“information of a technical nature for use in connection with the administration of arrangements made for purposes connected with the issue or cancellation of ID cards”

and paragraph (b) says:

“information of a technical nature for use in connection with the administration of the Register”.

The ability to manage the security and performance of the register’s IT systems is reliant on being able to assess effectively the operation of the system, and the pieces of information referred to in paragraphs (b) and (c) are key to allowing that to happen. Although I am not an IT expert, I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will allow me to give some examples of such information.

We are talking about error, database or event logs, which are essential for problem diagnosis or safe recovery of information in case of a systems failure; necessary technical data, including network event information and encryption codes, which will be used to detect and prevent security attacks and protect the integrity of the data; and certificate revocation logs to ensure that lost or stolen cards cannot be used in attempts to access the register.

I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will accept that such information relating to a card being cancelled or disabled is crucial if we are to ensure that the system has integrity and that people are not seeking to use a card that has been disabled. That is the type of information to which paragraph (c) relates. The authorities running the database would attach a code to an entry to indicate its expiry and the fact that the card can no longer be used.

The clause is also about keeping useful records of cards and card reader and biometric reader information, such as current operational status, manufacturing information and fault history. Such pieces of information are well-established elements within standard IT infrastructure packages and are essential for the security and operation of a database of this type.

I hope that the examples I have given the hon. and learned Gentleman are sufficient. I have more detailed technical descriptions if he wants me to provide them. I hope that he will understand that this provision is innocent and purely for the good running and integrity of the database, and to ensure that people who are accessing it are doing so against a live entry that has been entered properly.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I do not think that I could say that the Minister has whetted my appetite, nor can I say that I am either better informed or any the wiser, although that may be as much my fault as his. None the less, we have heard with interest and some amazement what he has told us. I think that I shall leave it there.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

There is a Thursday afternoon feel about this Committee. I take that as a request to withdraw the amendment.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Indeed. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I beg to move amendment No. 127, in clause 3, page 3, line 30, leave out paragraph (d).

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 128, in clause 3, page 3, line 31, leave out subsection (2).

No. 21, in clause 3, page 3, line 38, leave out ‘both practicable and appropriate’ and insert ‘reasonable’.

No. 129, in clause 3, page 3, line 41, leave out subsection (3).

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The amendments can also be put in fairly short compass: they are probing in nature, rather than ones that I wish to pursue, at least at this stage. However, the Minister may say something to change my mind on that—it has been known to happen.

Many of the arguments that would be advanced in relation to these amendments are the same as those advanced yesterday in relation to the amendments that sought to limit the amount and nature of information that will be held under clause 1(5) as registrable facts. The purpose of the amendments is to remove from the register information that is held at the request of the subject of the entry. The nature and the extent of the information held on the database must be strictly limited. Although the explanatory notes give an interesting example of emergency contact information, I am not persuaded that that alone would be sufficient justification for extending the scope of the clause. However, being mindful of events in the city earlier today, I am aware that there might be some merit in that.

There is scope for abuse. It is conceivable that people could agree to information being held on them if not exactly under duress, then under misrepresentation. How many times in the course of the working week do we sign forms without reading them properly? Someone of limited intelligence, or without good literacy skills, or whose first language is not English, might have a form put in front of them that says, “Just sign here so we can keep a record of this information. It is for your own good.” It is even more likely that people will not understand the full legal significance of information held in relation to them. Let me remind the Committee of the example I offered yesterday in respect of reference numbers: people might not know how a reference number might be understood by somebody accessing the database. On balance, there is no real need for this sort of information to be held on the database, and I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on this point.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I want to address amendment No. 21 and, possibly, amendment No. 129. Amendment No. 21 would alter clause 3(2), which deals with information recorded in the register, by changing the wording of paragraph (c). The clause is divisible into separate parts. Subsection (1) deals with information that “may” be recorded in the register, and subsection (2) deals with information about an individual that “must” be recorded in the register. Herein lies an area of concern. Information about an individual that must be recorded in the register, whether or not it is authorised by schedule 1—which we will deal with in due course—occurs when an individual applies to the Secretary of State requesting the recording of the information as part of his entry. I would be interested to discover from the Under-Secretary or the Minister what sort of information they envisage being the subject of such an application to the Secretary of State.

However, subsection (2)(b) states that

“the information is of a description identified in regulations made by the Secretary of State as a description of information that may be made the subject of such a request”.

Here, we return to the old problem. To refer to it again will seem repetitive, but that has to be done every time we return to it. We have not seen the regulations, and we have no idea what the Government envisage in respect of the information that they intend to describe in their regulations. We are simply legislating in the dark. It is not good enough, in my submission, to legislate in the dark, particularly about an area of public policy as sensitive as this. Even if a person makes an application because they want something about them to be recorded in the register, and even if it fits with the regulations that we have yet to see, they can only do that if the Secretary of State—tug our forelocks—considers that it is practicable and appropriate for it to be recorded in accordance with the applicant’s request.

How does the applicant make the application? Does he pop down to some Jobcentre Plus office? Does he go down to some local authority, or a Department for Work and Pensions office, or does he have to make a formal written application on a form, pay an application fee and send it off to the Home Office or one of the Government offices—in many cases, the Government office for the east midlands, based in Nottingham? How are such applications to be made, and how is the Home Secretary to reach a proper consideration of the practicability and the appropriateness of the information that the applicant wishes to have recorded about him? For my part, I find it difficult to think of information about me that I would want the Secretary of State to have, unless it were for some reason that would advantage me, as opposed to being convenient for the state. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East is going to tell us something.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I can think of one example that might be useful: next of kin details.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

There we are. Perhaps. What that indicates is not only that the information on the register about me will contain compulsory information that I have to put there, but that it might become a general store cupboard for my entire life, which, for my personal convenience or for the facilitation of the statutory purposes, the Government decide that I should store there as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre, yesterday or the day before, told us that huge numbers of bytes of memory would be required on the Government IT system in order to store and accumulate, and to allow the exchange of, that information. We all have our concerns about the Government’s ability to procure and manage IT projects, but I want to know what citizens will have to do in order to satisfy the Secretary of State that the information that must be recorded has got that far and crossed the hurdles of being practicable and appropriate. What does this all mean and what do the Government intend by it, and how will the citizen benefit by the exercise?

Liberal Democrat amendment No. 129 seeks to delete subsection (3), which states that where

“the Secretary of State and an individual have agreed on what is to be recorded about a matter in that individual’s entry in the Register”,

and

“the Secretary of State has given, and not withdrawn, a direction that what is to be recorded in that individual’s case about that matter is to be determined by the agreement”,

that should stand as a “conclusive presumption” that the information to which the direction relates is accurate and complete information about that matter. I want to focus our attention on the expression “conclusive presumption”.

The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and I, and possibly others in the Room, may be familiar with presumptions of one sort or another: some are rebuttable, some are irrebuttable. Some are rebuttable in the course of criminal proceedings but not in civil proceedings, and so on. A conclusive presumption is a fairly concrete dam—a large hurdle—which the citizen, or somebody else who is relying on or who wishes to question the information, will have to overcome. I am concerned about that, but perhaps my concerns will be assisted by the hon. Gentleman.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

Indeed, it is curious that the expression “conclusive presumption” has been used here. Certainly it is possible that both an individual and the Secretary of State could be mistaken about something, yet they would not be able to get over a conclusive presumption. Surely there would be no difficulty in having a rebuttable presumption.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

To push that a little further, there are other occasions, for example under the Civil Evidence Act 1995, in which the recording of a conviction against an individual can stand in civil proceedings as a presumption that he was rightly convicted, and had performed the criminal act. That can sometimes be overturned—the method need not detain us now. However, this seems to be a novel introduction of a category of presumption into the Bill.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

The hon. and learned Gentleman can perhaps confirm my understanding of conclusive presumption—I think that the distinction between a presumptio juris and a presumptio juris et de jure is that the latter category includes such things as the presumption that there will be 24 hours in the day, whereas anything else would be a rebuttable presumption.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Clearly, they talk of nothing else in the bars of Lerwick. The hon. Gentleman is right. One’s date of birth and the fact that one is the child of the person who is recorded as one’s parent on one’s birth certificate are considered to be presumptions that the court, for obvious reasons of efficiency and the dispatch of core business, will assume to be true. However, if other information comes in that might cause that to be questioned, the court will deal with it.

I am concerned—and no doubt the hon. Gentleman is, as it is his amendment and he has given some thought to it—about the use in this sensitive piece of legislation of the expression “conclusive presumption”. If this were a straightforward criminal justice Bill, affecting the relationships between private individuals, my concerns would not be as marked as they are about this Bill. However, we are considering a potential Act of Parliament that contains a strange expression underpinning an insidious alteration in the relationship between the citizen and the state. No doubt the “nothing to fear, nothing to hide” brigade will say that I am fiddling around and making silly points about something that we need not worry about.

I am genuinely concerned that where the balance between the state and the citizen is to be changed, we should be told everything, and the Government should be as clear, open, candid and frank as they can be. Where powers are given to the Secretary of State, as they are in this clause, to do things adverse or beneficial to the interests of the citizen, we should be told more about them. So it is with amendment No. 129, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister, whichever Minister it is, has to say.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

The hon. and learned Gentleman says that he hopes that the Government will tell him everything. That is exactly what my hon. Friend the Minister and I have been doing. There has been no attempt at any point to withhold any information about this legislation.

Let me begin with the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. As he knows, clause 3(2)(c) provides that where a person makes a request to add voluntary information to his entry in the register, the Secretary of State must record that information, among other things, where it is “both practicable and appropriate” to do so. That is the purpose of the clause. His amendment would remove the ability of the individual to ask for that information to be added. I think that he indicated that that was a probing amendment, in which case let me take him through a few things that we think might be appropriate, and perhaps he will be reassured.

During the consultations that the Government carried out following the publication of the initial Green Paper in 2002, the ability to record voluntary information was mentioned frequently as a feature that people would like the legislation to cover. I refer the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland back to the statutory purposes. He will know that they relate to the individual’s convenience. Clause 1(3)(a) states that an aim is to provide

“a convenient method for such individuals to prove registrable facts about themselves to others”.

We must bear in mind that spirit. The provision that we are discussing links back to the Bill’s original purposes.

Many people who were questioned during the consultation saw the advantage in being able to record information such as organ donor status. I have had discussions with the British Medical Association about the Bill. I believe that the BMA would welcome such a provision, which could also include information about blood groups and whether an individual has a particular allergy. All those things could be helpful to the individual in any given circumstances.

The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East raised an interesting point about next of kin. I remember that when I set off on my first Inter-rail trip with my first passport at the age of 18, my mum insisted on having the details that used to be on the back page written in—I think it was an old blue passport but the details can be put in the current one. People could write down the next of kin and address details. Emergency contact details in a more modern context involve exactly that kind of information. I hope to reassure the hon. Gentleman. There is nothing sinister behind the provision. We believe that it carries forward the spirit that I mentioned. People want to have things about themselves that would be useful to them in an emergency situation included. We should give them that provision.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

This is an interesting debate about what could be placed in the legislation. I think the Under-Secretary said that he was in discussions with blood donor organisations. Am I correct in that? If that is the case, and if there is a requirement to have discussions, would that mean that such organisations would be placing the information on the register? Will the Minister clarify the situation on the information? If we are talking simply about my placing such information on there, it goes no further than the debate we have had so far. If the Minister is suggesting that another organisation, separate from the governmental organisations, will be able to place information on there, that opens up a whole new ball game.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I am happy to clarify that point. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland raised it as well. He mentioned “sign here” and asked whether people would be under any pressure to record information when they might not want to do so. They might not understand what they were adding to their entry. I assure Members that we are talking purely about a request made by the individual and not one that empowers an organisation, albeit one with a noble and useful purpose such as an organ donation organisation. Such an organisation is not empowered to request the information gathered. It is the individual’s prerogative whether or not information should be added.

I have had discussions with the BMA. It is important to say that it sees a lot of practical advantage from the Bill. Members might know that it is keen to expand the number of people who are registered as organ donors. I would not want to overstate its support, but obviously there is potential for people to make the request more easily known to the authorities. I stress again that this is about an individual voluntarily deciding to add information to the register.

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough asked about how such applications would be made. I believe that the intention is to allow a space on the application form in which individuals could give information that they would like to be included. Once the regulations had been passed, the intention would be to set out the types of information that they would like to include under the heading. The process would be voluntary and entirely at the convenience of the individual. It would be at their disposal to decide whether it was in their interests to include that further information; no coercion at all would be involved.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Does the Under-Secretary not think that his life would have been rather easier if these regulations, forms and so on had been prepared in advance of this discussion? He would then have been able to say, “There is absolutely nothing to worry about; here is what we propose.” At the minute, however, he is guessing and cannot reassure me about the application procedure. He says, “I believe” or, “It is hoped that”. A little more certainty at this stage would have been useful for the presentation of the Government’s case and the relief of Opposition fears.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

With respect to the hon. and learned Gentleman, I should say that I am not guessing. I have just outlined the process by which people would add such information to the register. As I said, there would be a space on the application form—that is pretty clear.

The hon. and learned Gentleman complains that I cannot hand him the national identity register application form with all its boxes and details, and I cannot do that. However, we have not yet passed the Bill into law; it is proper that we should be discussing such issues now so that if concerns are raised, they can be taken on board before final decisions are made.

I am trying to explain to the hon. and learned Gentleman the clear process by which that information would be added. That other section would list, for instance, the kind of information that people may want to add. That seems an entirely sensible process, and a lot of people would take advantage of it.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

If somebody wanted to make a subsequent change or addition to what was already in that block, would they be charged? What would the process be? How much would it cost to do that?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

As the Bill makes clear in other places, it is for the individual to be satisfied with the information held about them on the register. They will be in full control of what is applied in the register, particularly in the voluntary section, when they enter their details on it. If people want to make a correction, a process will be outlined through which they can simply and easily do that.

Before now, we have said that internet access to the record would be free. A process will be outlined whereby people can amend their record simply. It will be there for the convenience of the individual and not to complicate the process or put obstacles in the way of people wishing to do so.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

Did the Minister say that the only way of doing that would be via the internet?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

No; that would not be the only way. However, the scheme is to be designed for ease of access to the individual’s record—obviously with the necessary security measures in place—so that people can access and view their records on the database with ease and, if necessary, request that changes be made. That should be as simple as possible and at as little cost as possible, if any cost at all. It is in everybody’s interest that the record should be accurate and reflect the individual’s wishes, particularly about the extra information that could be added.

I move on to other points raised by the hon. and learned Gentleman. He questioned why this part of the Bill was secondary legislation. The information placed in the register would be entirely voluntary. In that spirit, I hope he understands that it is proper for the provision to be left flexible, so that we can consider the range of information that people might wish to register.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I want to clarify internet access to the record. Will the individuals’ process of accessing their record from the internet be free?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I can confirm that there will be no charge to amend a record that is held on the register, unless—there is an “unless”—a new card needs to be issued. If that is necessary, a charge will probably be attached to it. However, if the matter is one of simply correcting or expanding a record on the register, there will be no charge and it will be there for the convenience of the individual.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I am sorry to press the Minister, but I noted yesterday that there was a charge of £10 for the data to be checked. I understand now that it is possible to do that via the internet for free.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

That is a different point. The charge of £10 relates to a data access request under the Data Protection Act 1998. It is a usual charge that most public authorities make because a certain administrative process is involved. The point made yesterday by my hon. Friend the Minister was that the Government are clear that the system is being conceived to allow people free access to their record via the internet. There will be no charge to view the record on the internet. I hope that my explanation has clarified the point for the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough did not talk a great deal about amendment No. 21, but I shall expand on some of the reasons why we believe that the practicable and appropriate test is right, but not the test of reasonableness. He referred to an intervention by the hon. Member for Lancaster and Wyre about the potential size of the files that could be held. In that sense, practicable is important because the information to be held will be of a reasonable size that can be stored easily on the system. The test of “practicable and appropriate” is equivalent to what is reasonable to be recorded, but it gives greater clarity in respect of the information that can be stored. Obviously, the test of appropriateness is important, too. It will make it absolutely clear that some information is inappropriate to be held, such as matters relating to people’s political opinions, ethnicity and so on. It is probably inappropriate to hold some information, which is why the test is set out in the Bill.

People who are unhappy with the Secretary of State’s decision not to record information about them will be free to complain to the national identity scheme commissioner. Although he would not have the power to direct the Secretary of State to reverse the decision, he would be able to examine and report on the way in which the Secretary of State had used his power under the clause. I hope that my comments have cleared up matters.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

We have been told that the Information Commissioner will be allowed to tell the Secretary of State to change his decision. What is the implication of his power in such matters? What is the point of him in that regard?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

The point of the Information Commissioner is to receive the request from the individual who was unhappy with the Secretary of State’s decision. To be clear, the hon. and learned Gentleman’s complaint all along has been about the state wanting too much information on the register. I am referring to the position when people are unhappy that the Secretary of State has refused to add to the register extra information about them, so we are probably discussing a small number of cases. We would be considering information that goes beyond those simple and well understood matters that I mentioned to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, such as next of kin and blood group.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The Secretary of State has all the cards in his hands. It is for him to make the decision about whether whatever the citizen wants to put on the register is “both practicable and appropriate” to store, but if he is dissatisfied with the decision that it should not go on the register, the citizen can complain to the Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner, however, cannot change the Secretary of State’s decision; he is not an appeal court. All he can say is, “Sorry, bad luck.” The Secretary of State can carry on refusing. There will be a dissatisfied citizen at the outset, and a dissatisfied citizen at the close of proceedings, so what will be the point? Is this a release valve of some sort?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I would like to be clear with the hon. and learned Gentleman. The national identity scheme commissioner will not run the scheme; he will not be the person who is accountable or responsible to the Secretary of State, and ultimately to Parliament, for how it is run. He will monitor, advise and provide scrutiny, not run the scheme. It is not appropriate to give power to a person who is at arm’s length and not involved in ensuring the proper maintenance and running of the register. That is he will be able to receive a complaint from a member of the public.

The commissioner will have the power to examine such a complaint, report on it and comment to the Secretary of State. He will not have the power to overturn decisions of the Secretary of State, which is an appropriate way for his powers to be used. If the commissioner had the power to overturn the decisions of the Secretary of State, he would effectively be running the scheme.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The Under-Secretary is perfectly accurately describing the powers of the commissioner and of the Secretary of State. However, the two do not seem to bite on each other. I can understand that the Secretary of State does not want the commissioner telling him how to run the system—he is not there to do that—but the commissioner must have a purpose in that regard. If an individual is dissatisfied and has a right to complain to the commissioner, but the commissioner can do nothing other than examine and report, how is the citizen to feel that he has had his day in court and that his complaint has been addressed? Will the Minister address that point, rather than telling me about the respective powers of the commissioner and the Secretary of State?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I am trying to do that. Before I give further clarification, may I remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that the information is to be given voluntarily? We are talking about a voluntary request and dissatisfaction with the Secretary of State’s refusal to agree to that voluntary information. We have moved away from the crux of the scheme and are dealing with additional information.

We can speculate about what information people might complain about. I have said before that, in the normal run of things, people will be able to register pieces of information that are acceptable and useful to them in their everyday lives. The commissioner will perform a role that is common with that of other ombudsman-like figures. He will be able to receive, report on and comment on complaints, but will not be able ultimately to direct or overturn the decisions of those running the scheme.

The commissioner will have the power to report on the performance of the Secretary of State, or those delegated to exercise his powers for him, and to lay those general reports before Parliament. I can reassure that hon. and learned Gentleman that there will be full public scrutiny of the use of the powers, including scrutiny by this place. Ultimately, a person who still strongly disagrees with the Secretary of State’s decision might pursue legal routes. I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman is all in favour of people fully using their rights to access the courts and spend a great deal of money doing so.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I cannot let the Under-Secretary get away with that; he could make better points. We want to ensure that this system works. Let us leave aside the fact that I oppose the Bill. If it is to be enacted, we must ensure that it works and it is sensible. It is not a satisfactory answer for the Under-Secretary to say, “It doesn’t matter, because people can sue to recover their rights or to ensure that their rights are protected.”

Although I object in principle to the legislation, we want to build a Bill that does the best for the individual. We are trying to make legislation for the citizen, not for the Government. Can the Under-Secretary not understand that there is a difference between worrying about how the system works and addressing that complaint? The simple declaration, “If you don’t like it, sue,” is not a satisfactory answer. It is an answer of last resort.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I did not just say, “If you don’t like it, sue.” I laid out a whole process that people can go through, including invoking the scrutiny of the scheme’s commissioner. All the hon. and learned Gentleman’s remarks on this matter are based on the assumption that the Secretary of State is entirely unreasonable and will be as obstructive as possible. We are talking about information being given voluntarily, and I have already made it clear that, where it is practicable and appropriate to do so, the Secretary of State will include that information. That is the basis on which the clause has been drafted.

Kali Mountford (Labour, Colne Valley)

Will my hon. Friend make clear the difference between his proposal and that of the Opposition? I pointed it out earlier that some of my constituents want him to go further; they want even more information to be on the register—their full medical records, for example. We on the Labour Benches have resisted that for good reasons, but one of my constituents might want to insist on it, even though it would have implications for others and put uncertainty into the system. Is that the situation he is referring to?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

My hon. Friend makes a helpful point. That situation could arise if this provision were removed. It would be impractical to add large amounts of information that an individual might want to have added. That is why the scheme is configured in this way.

My hon. Friend is right that the Opposition seem to want the commissioner to be all-powerful and ultimately to decide whether information is added to a scheme. I point out to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough that no public service or scheme operates in such a way that those who provide scrutiny and monitor those services ultimately run them. That is not their role. In the process that we have laid out, so long as the request is reasonable and practicable, the Secretary of State will accede to it.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

We are discussing medical records being placed on the register, which is an interesting idea as they would take up quite a lot of space on an electronic file. Bearing in mind the problems we have had in respect of size and implementation with other databases such as that for NHS passports, do the Government have any idea what size of electronic file will be allocated per person in this example?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I refer the hon. Gentleman to my earlier comments. I am not an IT expert—I have trouble running my own laptop—so I cannot tell him how many bytes or megabytes might be involved. However, I will endeavour to write to him to inform him exactly what size file we intend to hold on him and others.

In the hope that doing so will allow me to draw this discussion to a conclusion, I say again that this is a voluntary process. The test is “practicable and appropriate”. People might want to add swathes of data, but it might not be appropriate for such information to be held on the system. That is why the test is defined in this way. I will even concede to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough that even if a Conservative Home Secretary were administering this scheme, even I would not accept that he would be so unreasonable as to turn down a request for the addition of simple information to the scheme. One hopes that any reasonable Home Secretary would listen to the national identity scheme commissioner and accede to the points they made, if they were reasonable and correct.

Amendment No. 129, tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, would remove clause 3(3), which will enable the Secretary of State to agree with a person being registered what facts should be registered, where there is some doubt as to what the true facts are—for example, the place or date of birth. That refers us back to the comments made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough on the use of the term “conclusive presumption”. It is important that we outline what this part of the Bill refers to, why it is important for the provision to be framed as it is and why the words “conclusive presumption” are included.

It is also important for the Bill to have the flexibility to cater for those people who may not be able to provide the details requested, but where there is no question of that person trying to conceal their true identity. That pertains to people for whom a new identity needs to be established—for example, for those in a witness protection programme. That would be a proper agreement. Obviously, the Secretary of State would know why that person was seeking to create a new identity, it would be clear that the person was justified in creating it and there would be no doubt that that person was not doing so for improper reasons. In fact, that example is connected with the statutory purposes of the Bill, because it relates to aiding the detection or prevention of crime.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

That is an interesting and helpful illustration, but if a rebuttable rather than a conclusive presumption were involved, the position in relation to it would be in no way diminished.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I accept that point, but the Bill is meant to give absolute clarity on the fact that people in that position could not be deprived of their rights as a citizen, or deprived of their ability to have an accurate, accepted entry on the register. That would be done with the complete agreement of the Secretary of State, presumably with oversight from the scheme’s commissioner.

I can give the hon. Gentleman some other examples, if it will help. The provision might, for instance, relate to somebody from Traveller community who, for proper reasons, does not know with certainty their place or date of birth. I have encountered examples in my constituency surgery of people who came to this country in the 1960s or 1970s from Jamaica, or parts of the West Indies, without documentation. I have seen only recently the example of a young Kosovan gentleman who was swept up by the British Army when he was only 13 or 14 and taken out of the country.

There may be people who for genuine, valid reasons do not have absolute certainty on some particulars relating to their identity, but that should not preclude them from being fully entered as a citizen with all the same rights.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

These are good examples. The Minister might recall from yesterday that I mentioned people who are not always aware of their true date of birth. Does he not accept, however, that that is where the operation of a conclusive presumption, as opposed to a rebuttable one, can be dangerous? If it subsequently came to light that the information agreed between the individual and the Secretary of State was wrong, the operation of a conclusive presumption would close down or might cause difficulties in relation to the use of information that both parties had agreed on.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I am listening to the points that the hon. Gentleman is making. He is more well versed in matters of law than I am. My understanding is that the phrase in question creates an unalterable fact, and I can see why he is slightly uncomfortable with using it as the test. However, great care would obviously need to be taken in registering, particularly for someone in a witness protection programme. On the other hand, a police officer who had undertaken dangerous undercover work for a number of years could be in the same position. For people in such a position, the important thing is that they should have absolute certainty that, once the new identity is agreed and created, people cannot challenge, unravel or undermine it.

John Robertson (Labour, Glasgow North West)

This might not be the time to raise this subject—I am thinking of stories involving an attempt to take child out of the country illegally—but there could be cases in which people with dual nationality hold a British passport, and therefore an ID card, and a foreign passport. There are people from Ireland and various parts of Europe in the UK, but where would the information that those people held two passports be?

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I should like to give my hon. Friend a conclusive answer, because my wife holds two passports and I am sure that she would expect nothing less from a Minister. I would guess that the information could be held in the “other” section. People would register as a national of a particular country, but the fact that they held dual nationality could be recorded. I could come back to my hon. Friend with more clarity on that point, but that is how I guess it would be dealt with.

On the point that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made, the key to the conclusive presumption test is the phrase

“for the purposes of this Act”

in subsection (3). The test is concrete and unchallengeable, as he said, but the foundation of the Bill is the fact that, when an identity is entered into the register, we are as sure as we can be that that identity is correct and cannot be challenged further. That is why great care will be taken at the earliest stages of the process to ensure that the facts about any individual are unchallengeable. That, I believe, is why the phrase “conclusive presumption” is used, rather than “rebuttable presumption”, because a person who had been through those uncertainties would not want any further challenge to their new identity.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

I have two passports, and I have often chosen whichever queue was shorter when going through border checks. I have been asked different questions depending on which channel I went through. My concern is that, once the register was up and running, and depending on which passport I used, I could end up either with duplicate identities or with two identities that did not necessarily correlate.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

The hon. Gentleman sounds exactly like my wife, who has her cake and eats it, depending on which she country she is travelling to. She holds an American passport and a Dutch passport, and takes the American passport when it suits her. That is entirely proper and perfectly legal under the law of the countries where those passports are held. Under clause 1(7)(a), nationality is a registrable fact. As I explained to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West, rather than being in the “other” information, it would probably be recorded that the applicant held dual nationality. Those data could be recorded, but it would not in any way alter the convenience that the hon. Gentleman and my wife have at immigration points around the world.

I hope that I have given a lot of reassurance to the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland about the voluntary information, and about why we believe that subsection (3) is crucial to people in a vulnerable position, who should not be deprived of their rights under the scheme. I hope that he agrees that there is no sinister intent; the provision is purely a measure to help the good running of the scheme. I also hope that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough will accept that, although the “practical and appropriate” test is similar to his test of reasonableness, it is a clearer one to opt for.

I hope that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland will seek leave to withdraw the amendment.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

Every day in Committee one learns something new. It is perhaps a sign of my advancing age, but I remember the days when Conservatives were proud to be British, but according to the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, it is now a matter of convenience. Things seem to have reached a pretty pass. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for that slightly unfair comment, but I could not resist it; I think that I have suffered enough.

Tobias Ellwood (Conservative, Bournemouth East)

This is not being translated, so I cannot understand you.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

In view of the hon. Gentleman’s sedentary remark, I hereby withdraw my previous apology. I shall bear that remark in mind for the future when he next presents me with such an opportunity.

Amendments Nos. 127 and 128 deal with subjects that have frankly been done to death, and I do not think that we need to go over them any further. However, there is more to be said on amendment No. 129, and I am spurred to speak further about it by the helpful examples that the Minister gave us.

We are dealing with a number of different likely scenarios. The Minister gave the example of someone who is on witness protection and who wishes to have a new identity, whose terms must be agreed by that person and the Secretary of State. It is perfectly reasonable that such a person should want security in their identity. I do not take any exception to that, but I am not convinced that the offer of a presumption, as opposed to a conclusive presumption, would necessarily diminish the protection that such people would have.

I hope that the Minister might take the matter away and discuss it further with his officials. There are other people whom the provision would cover who come closer to the situation that he outlined, such as Travellers, whose date and place of birth might not be easily known or ascertainable. They would be covered, and caught in an unhelpful manner. He says that the important rider is the words

“for the purposes of this Act”,

but we must remind ourselves that one of the purposes of the Act, as set out in clause 1(4)(e), is

“securing the efficient and effective provision of public services.”

Presumably—the Minister can correct me if I am wrong—when the register is up and running and cards are issued under it, one will have to produce one’s identity card to obtain one’s state pension. I presume that that is the sort of service that would be included in the provision.

The expression “for the purposes of this Act” is relevant. If a subject’s date of birth is not clear, it might be agreed by that person and the Secretary of State, but subsequently transpire to be wrong. That person might, “for the purposes of this Act”, be entitled to use their card to obtain their state pension, but because we have a conclusive presumption, rather than a rebuttable one, that the date of birth is correct, they would not receive the entitlement that they would otherwise have received.

The provisions stray into an area in which rebuttable rather than conclusive presumptions are normally used. The Government should look at that, and perhaps the Minister can assist us.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and he is making a point that bears further thought. As he said a moment ago, the provision relates to an agreement between the Secretary of State and the individual. This is not a one-way agreement, but very much an agreement into which both parties would enter. Any facts that were entered in the register would obviously have been agreed by both sides.

The hon. Gentleman envisaged a scenario in which an order for compulsion was made and people drew down benefits. As I understand it from colleagues who know more about the law than I do, the data could still be changed even if they were subject to a conclusive presumption, as long as one of the two parties agreed that they should be further changed in the light of new information. So the provision does not preclude changes further down the line; it solidifies the information for so long as it is not challenged by the emergence of new information—if the hon. Gentleman understands my point.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I think that I understand what the Minister says, although I shall read the record carefully tomorrow to make sure that I am correct.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

The Minister’s intervention was helpful to some extent, but the conclusive presumption is not simply between the Secretary of State and the individual, but against the world. Anyone faced with the information contained in the agreement cannot get around it, even though they may have other information that undermines that presumption.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

Yes. Both the Minister and the hon. and learned Gentleman are correct. This is not a situation that cannot, under any circumstances, be got around—I would be surprised if there are not to many “nots” in that—but there is a suggestion that the presumption would normally be rebuttable. The standard for rebuttal would be very high, and something pretty dramatic would be required to overturn the presumption, but that is why it would always be a rebuttable rather than an irrebuttable presumption.

Andy Burnham (Labour/Co-operative, Leigh)

I should add some further clarification. Contrary to what the hon. and learned Member for Harborough said, the agreement is not between the individual and wider society, but between the Secretary of State and the individual for the purposes of the Bill. It relates to the individual and the registrable facts laid out in the Bill.

I refer the hon. Gentleman to clause 3(3)(b), which uses this phrase:

“the Secretary of State has given, and not withdrawn, a direction that what is to be recorded in that individual’s case”.

The Bill therefore acknowledges that the Secretary of State may withdraw a direction and enter a new fact. I entirely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but for as long as the facts are not challenged, it is important that they are given as much solidity as possible.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

I take the Minister’s point. He is right that this is an agreement between the individual and the Secretary of State, but that is not the issue. It is the consequences of that agreement that are at issue, and they are affected by the fact that the presumption is conclusive, and the matter can clearly be changed with the withdrawal of the Secretary of State’s direction. That is important, but unless and until that withdrawal is made, there is still a consequence that would be unnecessary if we were dealing with a rebuttable rather than conclusive presumption.

We have probably done the point to death; I am boring myself now. Something in the amendment might still benefit, however, from further quiet reflection in the course of the month. When the Minister’s officials head off to the south of France, they can think about the subject on the beaches of St. Tropez. When we return, and the leaves are turning in the trees, we might be able to revisit the subject, possibly even with a Government amendment.

The amendments moved by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough were interesting, and I do not think that they are a million miles apart from the other proposals. This has been an interesting and useful series of debates, but nothing is included in the group on which I would seek to divide the Committee, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

I feel obliged to indicate to the Committee that if we sit beyond 4.30, I shall suspend the sitting for 15 minutes at that time. I am quite prepared to carry on, but I shall suspend.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

I beg to move amendment No. 22, in clause 3, page 4, line 4, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

‘(4)Information which is not personal data, once entered in the Register, may continue to be recorded in the Register for so long as it is necessary for the statutory purposes for it to be so recorded.’.

Roger Gale (Conservative, North Thanet)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 130, in clause 3, page 4, line 7, leave out subsection (5).

No. 131, in clause 3, page 4, line 9, leave out subsection (6).

No. 23, in clause 3, page 4, line 11, leave out ‘consistent with’ and insert ‘necessary for’.

No. 132, in clause 3, page 4, line 13, leave out subsection (7).

No. 24, in clause 3, page 4, line 13, leave out from ‘order’ to ‘unless’ in line 15 and insert ‘under this section’.

No. 188, in clause 3, page 4, line 14, leave out from second ‘provision’ to ‘unless’ in line 15 and insert

‘that the Secretary is authorised to make by this section’.

No. 25, in clause 3, page 4, line 16, at end add—

‘(8)Particulars relating to disclosure of information about an individual from the Register which falls within paragraph 9 of Schedule 1 must be retained in that individual’s entry in the Register if that disclosure did not have the consent of that individual.

(9)In the case of particulars which are contained in personal data as a result of the requirement specified in subsection (8), the Information Commissioner shall, following consultation with relevant persons including the Commissioner established under this Act, publish criteria which specify the circumstances when such particulars can be removed from the Register.’.

No. 26, in clause 3, page 4, line 16, at end add—

‘(8)No draft order containing a provision that the Secretary of State is authorised to make by this section is to be laid before Parliament unless—

(a)the Secretary of State has prepared and published a report containing a proposal for the making of such provision;

(b)the report sets out the Secretary of State’s reasons for making the proposal;

(c)the report has been laid before Parliament and each House has approved the proposal contained in the report, either with or without modifications; and

(d)the draft order gives effect to the proposal so far as approved by both Houses.’.

No. 28, in schedule 1, page 40, line 18, leave out sub-paragraph (b).

No. 29, in schedule 1, page 40, line 30, at end insert

‘and his ID card number, which shall be the same’.

No. 30, in schedule 1, page 40, line 31, leave out sub-paragraph (b).

No. 31, in schedule 1, page 41, line 16, leave out sub-paragraph (l).

No. 32, in schedule 1, page 41, line 19, leave out sub-paragraph (m).

No. 33, in schedule 1, page 42, line 9, leave out sub-paragraph (g).

No. 34, in schedule 1, page 43, leave out lines 1 to 9.

No. 118, in clause 43, page 37, line 5, at end insert—

‘“Information Commissioner” means the Commissioner established by the Data Protection Act 1998 (c.29);’.

No. 119, in clause 43, page 37, line 11, at end insert—

‘“personal data” has the same meaning as in section 1 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (c.29);’.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

We can divide the amendments into four categories. Amendments Nos. 22 and 23 are to do with a discussion about the recording of information that is either, as the Bill would have it,

“consistent with the statutory purposes”,

or as the amendment suggests

“necessary for the statutory purposes”.

Amendments Nos. 25, 24 and 26 are in a separate category, which I shall subdivide. Amendment No. 25 deals with the public’s right to know, while amendments Nos. 24 and 26 deal with Parliament’s right to debate and to check the Government. Amendments Nos. 28 to 34 deal with the contents of schedule 1, and amendments Nos. 118 and 119 deal with the Information Commissioner and the data with which we are concerned.

First, I will deal with amendments Nos. 22 and 23. We can see from the amendment paper that the amendment refers to information that “is not personal data”, and discusses the fact that such

“Information ... once entered in the Register, may continue to be recorded in the Register for so long as it is necessary for the statutory purposes for it to be so recorded.”

Amendment No. 23 would replace “consistent with” with “necessary for”. The arguments may be semantic, but they are of some importance. They tease out the policy behind the Government’s reliance on statutory purposes and the need to record information, which is what clause 3 is about.

We have heard and discussed, to some extent, what the Government hope to do by storing the information, exchanging it between various agencies and providing us, the fortunate citizens, with the entitlement to oblige them by providing all that information. To protect ourselves against terrorism, and therefore enhance our national security, prevent and detect crime, enforce immigration controls and the prohibitions on unauthorised working or employment and secure the efficient and effective provision of public services are all perfectly laudable aims, subject to our discussion on Tuesday. I am concerned that the expression “consistent with the statutory purposes”, however, is not as strong or clear as “necessary for statutory purposes”.

I do not wish to give information to the Government that I do not volunteer unless that is strictly necessary. Such action might be consistent, but not something that I wish to do. It might be necessary, but if so, it is in a different category of problem. I trust that the Government can see the sense in extracting information from people only when it is necessary to do so. In this electronic age, we are all properly fearful about the misuse of information and unauthorised access to it, and about the lack of security of Government computers and information-holding systems.

For example, we often have to deal with constituency cases relating to the Child Support Agency or to the computer that holds information about county court judgments, which contains inaccurate information or information that, although accurate, has been misapplied. Using the word “necessary” rather than “consistent” would keep the Secretary of State on a choke chain, so that he realises that there is a higher test for the extraction, and therefore recording, of information on the register.

Let me move on to amendments Nos. 25, 24 and 26. I would loosely describe amendment No. 25 as covering the public’s right to know. It would add two new subsections. The first states:

“Particulars relating to disclosure of information about an individual from the Register which falls within paragraph 9 of Schedule 1”.

Paragraph 9 of schedule 1 refers to

“particulars of every occasion on which information contained in the individual’s entry has been provided to a person; ... particulars of every person to whom such information has been provided on such an occasion; ... other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information.”

Our point is that when those events happen, they must be recorded, especially if the individual did not consent to the disclosure of the information to third parties. As far as I can understand from paragraph 9, a “person” could be national security offices, another Department or another civilian or non-governmental organisation.

Proposed new subsection (9) to clause 3 reads:

“In the case of particulars which are contained in personal data as a result of the requirement specified in subsection (8), the Information Commissioner shall, following consultation with relevant persons including the Commissioner established under this Act, publish criteria which specify the circumstances when such particulars can be removed from the Register.”.

Again, the amendment seeks to encourage greater public understanding of and participation in the system that is holding and exchanging information about them. The country is better governed when the public know more about what is being done to them or on their behalf by the Government. Except in special circumstances of national security, investigation of crimes and so forth, there is a need for the greatest possible freedom of information and candour. I hope that, through amendment No. 25, we can achieve something along those lines.

Amendments Nos. 24 and 26 would allow Parliament to keep a hold on the Government. The Bill has already been described as merely an enabling Bill, as though that was a term of approbation. In my view, it is the contrary: the fact that the Bill is so vague and provides the Secretary of State with such a huge number of regulation-making powers is a matter of concern not congratulation. Amendments Nos. 24 and 26 are designed to redress the balance.

Amendment No. 24 would constrain the Secretary of State from making orders under the clause unless a draft has been laid before Parliament and approved by a resolution of each House. That seems perfectly sensible and wholly uncontroversial, as is amendment No. 26, which states:

“No draft order containing a provision that the Secretary of State is authorised to make by this section is to be laid before Parliament unless ... the Secretary of State has prepared and published a report containing a proposal for the making of such provision; ... the report sets out the Secretary of State’s reasons for making the proposal; ... the report has been laid before Parliament and each House has approved the proposal ... either with or without modifications; and ... the draft order gives effect to the proposal”.

We want Parliament to have sight, be told the reasons and have the power to amend, because as I understand it, statutory instruments are amendable—we either take them or leave them. The amendment would increase parliamentary oversight over the process, and I hope that no Member would find that objectionable.

The amendments to schedule 1—amendments Nos. 28 to 34—are a debating device by which we can discuss the information that may be recorded in the register. Amendment No. 28 would leave out paragraph 2(b), which relates to the signature, while amendments No. 29 and 30 would make it clear that the ID card number should be the same as the NIR number. Amendment No. 31 would delete paragraph 4(1)(l), which concerns personal reference numbers and mentions

“the number of any designated document which is held by him and is a document the number of which does not fall within any of the preceding sub-paragraphs”.

That provision basically covers any number attached to any document that the Government have not yet thought of but which may come into existence in due course. Amendment No. 32 would delete paragraph (m).

One could say many things about the schedule, and some have been said about it in earlier debates on personal information. Paragraph 2, which deals with identifying information, says:

“The following may be recorded in an individual’s entry in the Register—

(a) a photograph of his head and shoulders”.

I do not want to make a flippant point, but the provision does not say “a photograph of his face”. One may have the joy of looking into the register to find a picture of the back of the subject’s head and shoulders. I know what the Government intend, but that is not what is in the schedule, so I can imagine that all sorts of fun will be had by a clever fellow unless the wording is improved.

I do not wish to have a long discussion about handwriting and signatures, some of which are more legible than others. Over time, people change their signatures. I cannot say that my signature is identical each time I write a cheque. I do not intend to go too far into a discussion about people changing their signatures when they get married or are granted or inherit a life peerage. There any many reasons why people change their names and therefore their signatures. Such points need to be considered as we discuss the Bill.

The numbers game needs to be thought about. The Government seem merely to be allowing themselves to think of anything that might have a number and which can go into the great well of recorded information on the register. I need to be convinced that such information, as contained on the register, whether it is personal or identifying information, residential status, personal reference numbers or whatever else, is strictly necessary and will not interfere with the rights of the citizen to enter into agreements that might be numbered or arrangements with organisations that will lead to the numbers being put on a database.

Nick Palmer (Labour, Broxtowe)

How can it possibly be correct to delete paragraph 4(1)(m) of the schedule? That would mean that, although it would be possible to check that the individual had a work permit, it would not be possible to check whether the permit was still valid.

Edward Garnier (Conservative, Harborough)

That is one reading of the amendment. As I said at the outset, the purpose of the amendments is to provide us with an opportunity to discuss the whole principle behind the provision, but I do not need to say more about that.

As for amendments Nos. 118 and 199, I have no doubt that all members of the Committee will have taken the trouble to look at the Data Protection Act 1998. Amendment No. 118 would add to clause 43

“‘Information Commissioner’ means the Commissioner established by the Data Protection Act 1998”.

That clause is the interpretation clause. We wish to insert into it a definition of the Information Commissioner. His position was confirmed by the 1998 Act, but was created by the Data Protection Act 1984, as set out under section 6 of the 1998 Act. There is a good case for not having a separate Information Commissioner, but eliding the office with that of the data commissioner under the Data Protection Act, so that there are not two separate offices.

The more interesting point for us to consider is personal data under amendment No. 119. Under section 1 of the 1998 Act, personal data means

“data which relate to a living individual who can be identified ... from those data, or ... from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller, and includes any expression of opinion about the individual and any indication of the intentions of the data controller or any other person in respect of the individual”.

Early in our discussions, the Minister said that the data in the identity register would not contain opinion. There is a conflict in such matters because, under the 1998 Act, there is provision for data to be defined as opinion. It includes any expression of opinion. We can imagine the sort of opinion that might be in the national identity register: “Subject is known to associate with serious drug runners, people traffickers or suspected terrorists, so they are a suspected security risk.” That is the sort of opinion that the register might contain. When the Minister says, “It won’t contain opinion”, we must be sure that he is excluding such information. If he is including it, he should tell us, so that we know.

I have outlined the rough thrust of the amendments. I will resume my seat and listen to others who wish to speak.

Alistair Carmichael (Liberal Democrat, Orkney and Shetland)

Amendments Nos. 130, 131, 132 and 188 stand in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough made a couple of interesting points and gave some interesting working examples in relation to schedule 1. On signatures, he is right that it is common for people to have more than one signature. That happens for a number of reasons. When I sign constituency correspondence I take care to sign “Alistair Carmichael”, but when I sign a cheque or anything else I tend to employ a different and much less painstaking signature. He was also right about the difference between the face and the head, which arises quite commonly. Committee members might not be aware that when doctors refer to facial injuries and head injuries, they mean quite different things. Although it was an amusing example, the Government would do well to think about it. It would be difficult to compel somebody not to have a picture taken of the back of their head. They would be complying with the Bill, as drafted. We will hear what the Minister has to say.

Amendments No. 130, 131, 132 and 188 all refer to subsections (5), (6) and (7). They seek to delete them for the purpose of focusing debate on what the Government intend by them. Our principal concern is that we are dealing with an awful lot of what will be highly significant detail by way of secondary legislation. I hope that I have made it clear during today’s sittings that there is clearly a place for the appropriate use of secondary legislation, even though I never feel that this place scrutinises it particularly well.

My concern in relation to amendment No.130 is that subsection (5) allows the amendment of primary legislation—the Bill when it becomes enacted—by way of secondary legislation. It refers to schedule 1, which contains the meat of the Bill, because it specifies the information that can be held in the database. That is already drawn in exceptionally wide terms. If the terms are to be widened or constrained, that provision should come back to the Floor of the House. We are not dealing with some minor consequential measure; as others have said, we are dealing with a Bill that seeks to redefine the relationship between the citizen and the state. If we are to do that, it behoves Parliament to make time to do it properly. Seeking to make such a change by way of statutory instrument represents a poor deal, and I think that our constituents would expect rather more of us.

Subsection (6) gives the Secretary of State the power to

“make an order under this section adding information to the information that may be recorded in the Register only if he considers that it would be consistent with the statutory purposes for the additional information to be so recorded.”

That is an exceptionally wide provision. Indeed, for the recording to be “consistent” with statutory purposes seems a little weak. It is possible for something to be consistent without necessarily being on all fours. I cannot think what form of words I would favour, but I would like something rather stronger.

Amendments Nos. 132 and 188 refer to the operation of subsection (7), which requires the laying of a draft order before Parliament and its approval by a resolution of each House. Again, I wish to probe the Government’s thinking. Amendment No. 131 seeks to remove subsection (6), and we tabled amendment No. 188 because we do not wish the Government to have the power given under subsection (7). The Government must justify why matters of such consequence, which are of fundamental importance to the Bill, should be dealt with in a fairly peremptory and almost administrative manner.

David Drew (Labour, Stroud)

I have not yet made a speech in the Committee, but as it is some time since the sittings began, I shall not get involved in pleasantries, Mr. Gale. I shall keep my remarks short.

I wish to speak to amendment No. 130, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. I think that I shall speak not only for myself, but for other Labour Members who are not present. The amendment would remove subsection (5), which refers to schedule 1. A number of us feel that schedule 1 is far too widely drawn, and I hope that the Government will look at it carefully. For the Secretary of State to be able change the schedule through secondary legislation under subsection (5) is quite unacceptable. It needs to be done through primary legislation, I hope to redefine the whole the schedule, but I wish to make it clear that major requests about what information should lie on the register must be as clearly put and as carefully defined as possible.

I could give many examples, but I shall not do so because of the lateness of the hour. We may not get to debate the schedule, but there are a number of points in it that go way beyond the normal requests that one would expect to be made in order to create a register. I have my own misgivings about biometrics, which may be discussed later, but I hope that the Government will think again and redefine schedule 1, and in particular, how they go about adding or removing items from it.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I want to raise a number of points that pertain to the amendments and to schedule 1. First, can the Minister expand on the phrase “other biometric information” in paragraph 2 of schedule 1? “Other biometric information” covers a whole range of issues, from DNA to facial recognition and iris scan. When I had a meeting with officials from the Minister’s Department, as we all had the opportunity to do, we were assured that DNA would not be one of those biometric elements, but nowhere does the Bill specify what those biometric elements will be. That leaves it open for a future Government to add different types of biometric element, such as DNA, to the biometric register. They would be free to do so.

The Government may say that that is because the technology is not mature enough across the board and that, in the long run, they might have to deselect one option, such as iris recognition, and go for DNA. Certainly, DNA is the one biometric element that does not change according to people’s age, beauty or whatever, but it is much more intrusive. I am keen to know the Government’s reasoning for not choosing it.

According to the explanatory notes, and the case that the Government make, the Bill’s purpose has always been to provide a register of identification to use for verification. Our amendment No. 34 would delete paragraph 9. We believe that is the make or break bit that changes the Bill from a verification system to more than that—to leaving a footprint of medical records, checks and people’s inquiries—and that it leads to all the different issues I raised with the Minister during the first sitting.

For example, I asked about the information requested under clause 1(5)(h), which is expanded in paragraph 9 of schedule 1. The Minister said that paragraph 9 information cannot be disclosed except in limited circumstances. That information can be quite personal. So, who decides the limited circumstances in which that information can be disclosed? Well, hey presto! Clause 23 provides that the limited circumstances will be dictated by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, so the protection of the individual in relation to those limited circumstances is not included in the Bill. It is down to the Secretary of State to decide what the limited circumstances are and who gets the information.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

I tried to catch the hon. Gentleman’s eye earlier, in relation to his point about biometrics. On the point he is making now, it will not be the current Home Secretary who decides, just the Home Secretary. We do not seek to include powers invested in my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that endure beyond his tenure in that post.

Clause 43 identifies biometric information and makes it clear that that means external characteristics. I am told that, in accordance with the rules of statutory construction, that is not construed as DNA. I fully accept that DNA can be collected as biometric data, but it would need to be explicitly included in the Bill for that to happen. Clearly, DNA is not an external characteristic, so the Bill does not include DNA. I want to make that point very clear.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am grateful to the Minister for clarifying the latter point, but his first point is rather fatuous. I am afraid that he let himself down there. We are arguing about whether the Secretary of State—the holder of the office—rather than this Parliament, the people or the individual, should authorise what is limited and who is allowed access to paragraph 9 information. That is the crux of the issue as to when the Bill moves from verification to allowing others, such as Government agencies, to browse through the footprint of the questions put to the database so that they can track where someone—[Interruption.] Perhaps the Minister would like to say why I am wrong.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

Perhaps I was being facetious previously, but the hon. Gentleman needs to be exact in his language. He should show me the part of the Bill that allows any Government agency—security services or otherwise—to browse through the database. That is the exact term he used, but the Bill will not allow agencies to do that.

If the hon. Gentleman can show me a clause that permits such a thing, I shall happily withdraw what I said. He should not use language such as “browse through”, “open access” and “fishing through the database” when those things will not be permissible activities for any agency, Government or otherwise, under the Bill.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

Government agencies will have access to paragraph 9 information and be defined by the Home Secretary. I concede that the Bill does not use the word “browse”, but it does not matter whether it says “browse” or not. What matters is that the Home Secretary will decide who has access, with or without an identity card being presented. That is the difference.

If one looks at the explanatory notes, one sees that the Government say that this is supposed to be about a person presenting their ID card and verifying that they are who they say they are. However, paragraph 9 information involves the Secretary of State being able to decide that an agency of the Government can have access to that database. The individual with their ID card does not have to turn up, if the Secretary of State so decides. That is the difference. We have gone from verification to something more. That is important, and that is why we seek to remove paragraph 9.

Tony McNulty (Labour, Harrow East)

But what the hon. Gentleman describes is not in the context of browsing, going fishing or other such wide and permissive terms, but in the very clear context outlined time after time in clauses 19 to 23. This is not a permissive all-open, “Come down to the tombola and pick out whatever you want” element of the Bill, as he suggests. He should not suggest that without fully understanding every aspect of the Bill and how they interlink. He should not pick out one clause and build a case on it, because that case will collapse.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

The Minister says that this is not browsing, but he must allude to what he defines as a focused request to look at records. I shall describe my involvement in that in this country and in Northern Ireland. One starts one’s investigation by focusing on a village or a well known pub in Northern Ireland, say. One says, “We know that the suspect went to a pub but we do not know who owns it, so we shall browse the information on that individual. We shall then browse the information about everyone in the flats above the pub.” The Minister must define his focus.

Kali Mountford (Labour, Colne Valley)

I am trying to understand the hon. Gentleman’s objection to this clause, which involves registering facts about an individual and identifying them, rather than the use to which the registering is put. It is interesting to hear how he operated searches in his previous occupation, but clause 19 is about access to the information. Is he not satisfied that what he is talking about is simply precluded under all the other existing statutes and those limitations in clause 19, which we shall come to later?

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me an opportunity to explain and expand on clause 19, subsection (2)(c) of which states that the provision of information is authorised

“to the Director of the Government Communications Headquarters for purposes connected with the carrying out of any of the functions of GCHQ”.

Do you know what the functions of GCHQ are, Mr. Gale? They are listening and intercepting. The paragraph says “any of the functions”, not “specific functions” or “specific requests from members of the security services”. We need to understand the functions of those Government agencies and how they carry them out. Then we will recognise the fact that they will not come with a specific request for the Secretary of State, such as, “Mr. Secretary of State, can we specifically look at this individual?”

Kali Mountford (Labour, Colne Valley)

I understand that when we reach clause 19 the hon. Gentleman will object to those aspects of the Bill, but how does the registering of facts about an individual, under either clause 3 or schedule 1, make any difference? I am trying to understand what objection he has to those pieces of information.

Ben Wallace (Conservative, Lancaster and Wyre)

My objection is to the fact that once the footprint facts have been recorded, under clause 19 certain Government agencies will be able to look at them. If we prevent the footprints from being recorded, the Bill will move to providing for a verification system, which is what the explanatory notes say it will provide, and it will go no further. That is why we object to paragraph 9 of schedule 1. It goes beyond providing for the verification role, and we need to explore it.

To sum up, that move has gone beyond what was expected, and I think that a number of people from a number of parties believe that to be the case. If the Government were serious and they removed that footprint, they might get more support at the next stage of the Bill’s consideration.

Debate adjourned.—[Joan Ryan.]