Orders of the Day — Identity Cards Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 8:22 pm on 20 December 2004.

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Photo of Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Corbyn Labour, Islington North 8:22, 20 December 2004

That is a fascinating argument, based on the comfort and love of technology, which solves all problems. If we were to take my hon. Friend's argument at face value, that would mean having a biometric reader in every branch of every bank in this country and, I presume, alongside every cash machine. I presume that somebody will staff the cash machine to check that the person is using the biometric reader. What kind of society are we heading towards if we cannot go anywhere without checking in with a biometric reader to confirm that we are who we say we are? What kind of society will such a scenario create?

I am proud to represent a very multicultural inner-city community. It contains people who have come from all over the world, who have either migrated to this country, migrated from other parts of the United Kingdom, or sought and received asylum here. After a great deal of work over many years, relations between the local communities and the police are pretty good. There is a good working relationship. Who is to say whether, with the development of these ID cards, we will not return to all the past horrors of stop and search, the use of earlier vagrancy legislation, and the profiling of individuals to decide whether they should be stopped and searched?

I suspect that "voluntary" cards will be introduced, and that various agencies will decide to check whether people with certain ethnic attributes have a card. We will end up with racial profiling. In relation to health care and examination, one hopes that emergency services will always deal with emergencies, but are we to assume that hospital staff will ask everyone who wants to make an appointment for a non-emergency service for their identity card, or will it just be those with a west African-sounding name, a Turkish-sounding name, a Somali-sounding name or a south Asian-sounding name? I suspect the latter. I suspect that we will end up with an unpleasant society, biometric readers in certain places, a large degree of stop and search going on as a result, and people living at the margins excluded.

For example, we are supposed to register every time we change address—but I know of many people who lead entirely chaotic lives, who would never in a million years get round to registering a change of address, particularly when they change address every three or four weeks, or at least every three or four months. Will they be fined £1,000 every time they do not register? What will we do when they cannot or will not pay the fine, or other penalty? What kind of criminalisation will result from that?

What about Travellers, who lead an itinerant existence? I would have thought that in a modern, democratic, tolerant society we could and should be able to accept different lifestyles. What will we do with people who refuse to, or simply cannot, register? Will we create a group living on the margins, for ever exploited as illegal workers, because their employers can get away with it and it suits society?

The House should think very carefully before passing the Bill, if for no other reason, then for the following two reasons. First, this is not about identity cards; it is about a national identity register. That is what clause 1 says. Secondly, this is enabling legislation, which is being rushed through tonight, and will have to be out of Committee by the end of January. Presumably there will also be pressure to get it out of the House of Lords so that it will appear on the statute book quickly. It will then be law, and although the public as a whole may not understand the concepts of primary and secondary legislation, the fact is that tonight is the major opportunity that MPs will have to vote on this material, except for Report and Third Reading. After that there will be only secondary legislation, which is impossible to amend and difficult to vote against—difficult, indeed, to influence in any way.

I ask Members to think carefully about the kind of society that we are creating with the Bill, and about what kind of society we want to live in. The Bill will not solve crime, fraud or terrorism; it represents the comfort zone of the high-technology security industry, which will be easily hacked into. A much better form of security is protection of the individual and respect for that individual's liberties, independence and right to justice. That, rather than going down the road of examination, interference and control, will lead to a fairer, more just and more co-operative society.