Clause 1 - The National Identity Register
Identity Cards Bill
3:45 pm
Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)
On the last group of amendments, the Minister issued a robust challenge and made an effective case as to why he felt that the national identity register was no different from what had gone before. I would like to respond to that challenge, particularly with regard to amendments Nos. 68 and 69, and I am sure that we will continue to clash over such issues during the next few days.
Amendments Nos. 68 and 69 can be described as filleting amendments. They remove a whole range of information from the potential national identity register, because we think that the addition of that information represents a significant change from what has gone before. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) was right to warn us about the dangers of incrementalism. Just because something has happened before, if one is going a step further that does not necessarily mean that that additional step should automatically be acceptable.
The Government have said that they are committed to having an identity card system. If we are to have such a system, it is important that, while addressing the detail of it, we continue to debate what shape it should take. In this clause, the Government have put forward a particular model for a particularly comprehensive identity database, which I will argue, in the context of amendments that remove much of that, goes far beyond what is strictly necessary. I am sure that there are plenty of technical deficiencies in amendments Nos. 68 and 69, but I hope that the sense of them will come through, which is that we want to end up with a far poorer database that contains much less information than that which the Government propose. There are good reasons why less could be more in the context of the database.
There are principled and practical reasons for what we are proposing. In our model, the database has identity characteristics. We should cut through everything and get down to the question of what identity is. The identity of an individual is ultimately simply their physical being, and biometrics are a way of recording that. None of the other characteristics we are talking about—not even names or dates of birth—are unchangeable characteristics of identity. People change their stated dates of birth. There are significant numbers of people who do not know their exact date of birth, and when they are asked to produce it, they come up with a date and that date becomes their date of birth; however, that date cannot strictly speaking be verified in any meaningful way. Names change, and addresses certainly change, and I will focus a lot on why I think the address data are particularly problematic.
The Minister again referred to us looking forward over a period of time, but if we include all the data covered in the database and we project ourselves forward 10 or 20 years, what we have is an incredibly comprehensive intelligence database. In a sense, it is a national suspect database. I understand why, from a policing point of view, that is a very attractive proposition.
That reminds me of the debates that we had about the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the requests by the National Criminal Intelligence Service for internet service providers to record all internet traffic over a period of seven years. I understood why, from a policing point of view, there would be value in that. However, it was incumbent on the Home Office, again following the principles of proportionality and necessity, to argue against the police. It needed to come to a settled view as to what was appropriate and what level of intrusion into an individual's privacy was appropriate to the aims.
In that context, the Government have simply gone too far, particularly in recording the address detail, which is quite important. If we were to follow the scheme and record all the information set out in subsection (5)(b) to (i), we would have an intelligence database that would allow an investigating authority to establish not only the identity of an individual—in strict terms, the biometric data—but a complete history of where they had lived. Over time that history would grow.
Again, that is where the proposal is quite different from something like an electoral register database or a birth register, which simply records a specific event in time. We are talking about a comprehensive database that follows us throughout our lives and possibly beyond, because the data will not be destroyed at the point of death. As well as recording information about where an individual lives at any point, it will allow people to perform known associate searches by cross-referencing all the people who lived at particular addresses at certain times.
There is a specific amendment to remove or to test the auditing data provision as well. I recognise that the Government are between a rock and a hard place. Not to have auditing data exposes them to accusations that the data will be accessed and no one will be able to track down a perpetrator—a person who accessed it illegally. To have it significantly adds to the quantity of data that could be used to intrude on someone's privacy. The collection of data on every place that someone has lived and all their known associates who lived in or shared those addresses at a certain time, and the auditing data, means there is a comprehensive intelligence database, which I imagine would be attractive to law enforcement agencies.