Clause 1 - The National Identity Register
Identity Cards Bill
2:45 pm
Mr Des Browne (Minister of State (Citizenship, Immigration and Counter-Terrorism), Home Office; Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Labour)
I have do doubt that Committee members will look forward to the hon. Gentleman reading out that list, as the Privacy International briefing was probably circulated to all of them. The point that I make to the hon. Gentleman is that there is clearly a danger in accepting arguments—without seeking to establish what underlies them—from people who wish to lobby from a particular point of view. What underlies this argument must be the simple arithmetical calculation of counting up all the registrable facts. However, I have the advantage that the Government's thinking—and mine—has to be reduced to the form of a Bill and published; the evidence of the Government's thinking is there. A number of those facts are administrative and are not in the individual's ownership in the sense that no such information is ever in any individual's ownership.
I have no objection to the hon. Gentleman's accepting arguments from other organisations and repeating them; that often engenders healthy debate and discussion. However, if he does that, it must be open to me to point out where those organisations have misinterpreted the Bill, if they have done so, or where they have done that simple arithmetical calculation and misrepresented what a registrable fact is for the purposes of this legislation.
In applying the test of proportionality and of whether this is the historic change that people suggest it is, we should consider the Bill rather than the rhetoric. I argue—whether people are persuaded is a matter for them—that there is no great controversy about the information gathered on individuals in the database and that the Government, in one guise or other, probably know much of that information. Much information on many citizens is in the public domain in any event—in telephone directories or in other documents in general circulation. Such public documents have a significant amount of information about all of us, unless we choose that they should not have it.