Clause 1 - The National Identity Register
Identity Cards Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Des Browne (Minister of State (Citizenship, Immigration and Counter-Terrorism), Home Office; Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Spanish have nothing like as good an identity register as that which we propose, and nothing like as secure a way of proving the identity of individuals. It seems pretty obvious—I have no doubt that I could find many examples—that if the police or security services had information about, for example, the laundering of money that they suspected might be associated with or supportive of terrorist activity, they could check the identity register in such a serious criminal investigation against the identity of the person who opened or operated the relevant bank accounts.
The register could be checked to ascertain whether a suspect was registered. If they were not registered, the police could investigate how they came to have a bank account. If they were registered, they could find out where they were registered to be living. That would provide the security services with a significant amount of information in any number of circumstances. The police might find paraphernalia that they believed was normally associated with terrorism and might be able to pick up a fingerprint. By reference to the register, they would be able to ascertain who a certain person was—if they were registered in this country.