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Baroness Anelay of St Johns: My Lords, I hope that the House will excuse me if I first say how very much I am looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ballyedmond.
I can give the Minister and the House my unequivocal support, and that of my party, for proper parliamentary scrutiny of Bills that bear within them matters of constitutional importance. We have always acknowledged that the Home Secretary inherited a difficult job from Mr Blunkett—a torrent of Home Office legislation and headlining Bills that the Government must have known they would never have time to take through both Houses if they set their minds on an early election this spring. The question therefore must be—why have the Government set their own Identity Cards Bill up to fail? The answer lies in Mr Blunkett. He gave the game away in interviews earlier this month when he made it clear that the Government's plan is to try to blame us on these Benches for their failure to give parliamentary time to the Bill. My Lords, that will not wash.
The Select Committee on the Constitution pointed out in its fifth report:
"The constitutional significance of the Bill is that it adjusts the fundamental relationship between the individual and the State".
Such an important Bill deserves proper consideration in this House. Like the Minister, I give my commitment that I will listen most carefully and constructively to all the points that are put on all sides of the argument.
In the debates in another place, we set out five reasonable tests to determine whether the Bill is a proportionate and effective response to the Government's perceived need for ID cards. The Government failed to pass those five tests. They now have the opportunity to use the Committee stage in this House to persuade us that those five tests can be met. We will listen, but we know that so far the Government have failed properly to address the concerns that have come from all sides, including from those who would support the introduction of ID cards soon.
The Bill highlights the need for the Government to maintain a balance between the interests of the citizen and the role of the state. Of course it is the duty of the state to protect the lives of its citizens, but the duty to protect life must be balanced by the duty to protect our way of life. As I made clear in the debate on the Loyal Address, before 9/11 I would not have countenanced ID cards. After that, I accept that we must at least consider them. We should examine carefully any measures that might enhance the nation's security, while maintaining a proper degree of proportionality. ID cards, introduced properly and effectively, might help to do just that, so the Bill deserves detailed
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consideration. Despite the best efforts of my honourable and right honourable friends in another place, they were left in the position of having to skim through some 20 clauses—about half of the Bill—in the last Committee session, on matters that could not then be addressed on Report. We need to be allowed time to do better.
The noble Baroness has reminded us today that ID cards already exist to some extent in practice, as passports and driving licences, and for asylum seekers as application and registration cards. It is worth considering the introduction of a framework that encompasses them all, but it is vital that the framework should be more than a mere enabling Bill, which is the fundamental flaw of the Bill. The Minister said today that we cannot expect more, but I agree with the Constitution Committee which said:
"The common thread in our suggestions is that Parliament should not leave a scheme of such significance and complexity to the Secretary of State alone to develop, bring into operation and maintain".
In recent years, it has become both legally and technically possible to pass around government large quantities of data about British citizens. We know that. Those data, plus the national identity register, are of more importance as a threat to privacy than the card itself. The Minister made clear today that the card will play little effect in the system; we ourselves become the identity card. The debates in another place made that abundantly clear. An important part of the Bill must be to put statutory control on the use and deployment of existing data, yet time and again the Government have so far refused to improve the Bill to make it clear just how the system could operate fairly and effectively.
The Minister has referred to some of those issues today. The first is the matter of an upper and lower age limit. Clause 2 states that people over the age of 16 would be coerced into registering. As the Minister says, this is still a work in progress as far as the Government are concerned. Clause 2 gives an enabling power to extend or reduce that age range. In Committee in another place, the Minister, Mr Browne, said:
"No decisions have yet been made . . . We will work out the specifics of the issue appropriately in future".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 18/1/05; col. 82.]
On another basic issue, of which addresses we will all be required to register, the Minister said:
"Much more work is required on the processes for issuing ID cards before we will be able to draft the regulations".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 18/1/05; col. 73.]
The Bill requires us to register all our previous addresses for a period that has not yet been defined; it could be for the whole of our lives. Yet, the Minister in another place, Mr Browne, said:
"For most people who have lived at the same address for a reasonable period, the current address is all that will be needed".—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee B, 18/1/05; col. 73.]
However, that is not what the Bill says. How will the Government discriminate between people, and between different groups of people, to determine who
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has to give more details? And for how long—for 10 years or for life? How will they decide what each of us has to do? The Government have simply tried to make the Bill too broad-brush. It is a framework, but by no means a clear one.
I turn now to the five tests that we have consistently put before the Government and required them to meet before they can reasonably expect Parliament to give consent for an enabling Bill of such constitutional importance. The first is clarity of purpose. The Government must not only make clear the specific purposes for which an ID card is required, but in particular they must make it clear which of those purposes are priorities; otherwise it will be difficult to assess them. Where no individual purpose is specified, it must be made clear that an ID card is not a requirement. One of the main objections to the 1940s wartime ID card was mission creep. At the beginning, the card had three distinct purposes; it ended up with 39.
In the debate leading up to the Bill and during the consultation process, the Government claimed that a national ID card is needed to allow access to benefits and services; to provide proof of age; for voter registration; crime reduction and immigration purposes; to tackle terrorism, money laundering, people trafficking and ID fraud; and to provide access to public services. It is important to know which of those is a priority, since different services and purposes demand different types of card and registration.
The second test is technology and its capabilities. The Minister has updated us a little on that today. The system must be robust from start to finish; from the card to the biometric reader through the communication system and into the central computer, database and software. It must be impossible for a virus to enter the system; if it did so it would cause mayhem. It could create and conceal multiple identities, thus corrupting the system's core purpose. So far, the Government have said that such matters are work in progress. The Minister has said so today, to a certain extent, but has begun to take us forward.
The fact is that biometric technology is fallible. Fingerprints and iris scans cannot always be easily taken, and technology can be fooled. It is vital to the progress of this project that the public and authorities should be clear about the technology's weaknesses as well as its strengths. We would need to examine in Committee the Government's assessment of the current state of technology and its likely future progress on these issues. In particular, after the Minister's speech today, we will need to examine the research to which she referred, which we are told will be published next month.
The third test is the question of whether the Government can run the system. We know that this would be the most ambitious technology project the country has ever seen. We also know that this Government have a less than perfect record in overseeing large-scale projects. That is not a party pre-position. I do not envy them in running some of the major technology projects modern society seems to
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expect. However, the most recent examples of failure include those of the Child Support Agency computer and the national fingerprint identification system. Both of those look like modest projects compared with the proposal to set up a national identity register of the complexity that is within the Bill.
The fourth test we considered was the cost-effectiveness of the scheme. The Minister has sought to reassure us today by saying that we will have to deal with some of those costs anyway, because of the difference in the way passports will be issued in future. We need to look at all the issues involved in costing. The introduction of the Bill saw the cost of the ID card scheme almost double overnight, from £3 billion to £5.5 billion. Conventional wisdom now puts the overall cost somewhere between £10 billion and £20 billion, by the time one takes into account all the costs associated with a national identity register and the need to have machine readers available to police, hospitals and others who may be required to check identity and create an audit trail of our lives. We will need to examine in Committee how the Government intend to control the cost, and whether the money would be better spent on trying to stop illegal immigration, terrorism and benefit fraud by other means.
The final issue is that of civil liberties. We must examine the real concerns about these. The scheme proposed in the Bill will involve the establishment of the national identity register, the use of the latest technology and the gathering of information on millions of people. That register will be the hub that allows the collation of, and access to, vast amounts of data on individuals from many government databases. Parliament must oversee the nature of the data used on the cards, and must control who has access to them.
In an ideal world, of course, we would not need ID cards, but we recognise that it is right to examine now whether they have become necessary. It is also right, however, that we ensure that any proposals are carefully scrutinised so we can achieve the aims of the Bill at minimum cost, and with the minimum incursion on people's liberties.
As the debate progressed in another place, it became increasingly apparent that many more organisations than we had at first thought will have access to this new database. That means that the scope for unauthorised access could be unmanageable. There is even the possibility that the data must be shared with other countries—a topical example would be Ireland—because of the common travel area.
Echoing the view of the Constitution Committee, Liberty's briefing states:
"The bill is of constitutional importance and will permanently alter the relationship between the individual and the state".
I do not say that no national identification scheme could ever theoretically be justified. I do say, however, that any project with huge financial and constitutional implications needs to be justified clearly as a proportionate and effective response to social need. So far, the Government have not justified the method they have adopted in this skeletal enabling Bill. We will
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need to hold them to account in the remaining stages of the Bill, and I will do so in a constructive and open manner. If the Government are serious about the Bill, they will give this House that opportunity.
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