Clause 1 - The National Identity Register
Identity Cards Bill
10:00 am
Mr Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Woking, Conservative)
I want to add to what my hon. Friend has said. I will say this only once, but it is an important preamble. So many people out there believe that the ID scheme that we are debating is simply about a piece of plastic, but as is demonstrated clearly in the Bill, that is only one small part of a much larger scheme. The Government are establishing a vast, complex and far-reaching system that will involve an unprecedented use of personal information. The fundamental purpose of the Bill is to establish the database, and ID cards will be merely a by-product of that.
Put in simple language, clause 1(3)(a) tells us that the purpose of the register is to make it convenient for me to prove registrable facts about myself to other people. So far in our lives—the Minister may share this experience—we have all, from time to time, had to establish various facts about ourselves. It is not uncommon to be asked one's address, full name, date of birth and even one's passport number. So far, one has not often had to prove more than that.
My understanding is that the clause and schedule 1 set out no fewer than 51 registrable facts that an individual will have to establish with the database. The individual will have to provide those registrable facts and face a penalty of £2,500 if they fail to do so. It is a very heavy undertaking for an individual to have to respond to a Government who say, ''We require this information and you must provide it under penalty.''
Clause 1(3)(a) simply sets out that we are talking about
''a convenient method''
to enable an individual
''to prove registrable facts about themselves to others''.
My first question is whether the clause really suggests that the individual will have to prove all 51 registrable facts to others. Secondly, who are the ''others''? I am not talking about the part of the clause that says that other people can check on an individual; that is in subsection (3)(b). Subsection (3)(a) enables an individual to prove a little about themselves to someone else. The real question is who are the ''others''?