Clause 2 - Individuals entered in Register
Identity Cards Bill
5:00 pm
Mr Humfrey Malins (Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Woking, Conservative)
These are probing amendments on which we shall not seek to divide the Committee. Their purpose is to draw from the Minister a little more detail about age.
I had an interesting letter from a pensioner in north London this morning, who asked me to put in a plea to the Minister that there be an age limit beyond which the elderly will be exempt from having to register. The argument was very well put. He did not disclose his age, but he said:
''You will appreciate that by the time identity cards are made compulsory (in perhaps seven years' time or so) most of today's pensioners will be well into their seventies and indeed quite a high percentage will sadly be dead.''—
Clearly it would not apply to them, but for those into their 70s, he says:
''To force a pensioner to go to a passport office or police station to be eye-scanned and fingerprinted would be stressful to say the least to a lot of them and really isn't needed if only travelling to the continent . . . for example, with their children by car. Pensioners are very unlikely to be terrorists or commit serious crime such as fraud . . . few will ever work especially after the compulsion date of identity cards.''
He submits that leaving all pensioners over 65 out of the scheme could save the Government time and money, and save pensioners undue stress and financial hardship. I do not know whether there is much in that, but if the Minister is considering the issue of age, does he feel there is such a role for the very elderly?
Secondly, a point arises out of the document ''Child Impact Assessment'' from the all-party group on children, which the Minister may also have seen. It is a sorry state of affairs that we sometimes receive briefing papers quite late in the day. I seem to recall that over the years I have received briefing papers and amendments for most of the debates in which I have taken part half an hour after the debate has finished. Therefore, I hope that I will be forgiven if I do not entirely grasp some of the points that are made in this debate.
The document states that the Bill contains the power to extend the requirement for ID cards to children under 16 through secondary legislation. Could the Minister make some observations on that? The document goes on to state:
''For 16 and 17 year olds (and for all children if the powers of the Bill are extended) there will be a duplication of information on the National Identity Register and on the information sharing indexes to be established by the Children Act 2004 . . . The National Identity Register will contain information on individuals aged over 16. Cl. 2(7) provides that the Secretary of State may by order amend the age . . . meaning that the provisions of this Bill could potentially apply to everyone in the UK from birth.''
That again brings into play the question of young people being entered on the register. What ages will the provision include? The all-party group goes on to state:
''The accepted definition of a child . . . is up to 18 years, with some exceptions for particularly vulnerable groups''.
The document informs us that two databases that hold information about children will overlap with the new register. One is the Connexions card database that was established under section 117 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. This is news to me. It is for 13 to 19-year-olds and may be enhanced by a smartcard to be proposed in the forthcoming youth Green Paper. Secondly, information-sharing indexes are to be established under section 12 of the Children Act 2004, with which I am sure all colleagues are familiar. There is an issue about children, which I shall not go into in further detail. The Minister will have received some briefing papers. It would be helpful to have some response from him on those questions about age and children.
Amendment No. 127 deals with a different point. This argument will be familiar to the Minister. The Bill is described as enabling legislation, which means that the framework of powers is set out in the Bill with a view to phasing in registration and the issuing of cards over several years. The Home Office accepts that the Bill does not set out in detail how the scheme will work in practice, as it is too early in its development for such decisions to have been made. Consequently, much of the detail about the process, determining who will have to carry a card, who will have access to information and how information may be passed on is not included in the Bill. Those fairly key details have been reserved by the Home Secretary for secondary legislation.
It is inevitable that legislation creating a new scheme will allow for some future and more detailed provision, but it can be argued that it is an unhappy state of affairs that so many fundamental aspects of the scheme will not be subject to the full scrutiny of Parliament. Does the Minister agree? The Bill makes repeated reference to the need for affirmative resolution by both Houses of Parliament to extend any provisions in respect of compulsion, information recorded, sharing and so on. That provides some checks on the Government's ability to extend the provisions, but the affirmative procedure is a pretty blunt tool for legislative scrutiny, as it does not allow for amendment of a proposed regulation. It is argued that, to enable full legislative scrutiny and parliamentary debate, the power to amend regulations should be written into the Bill whenever regulations deal with categories of persons or bodies. There is something in that.
That summarises my position. There has been some recognition in clause 7 of the need to allow alteration. That clause creates an ability to amend when extending compulsion. It is argued that that is also important in allowing flexibility when making orders about who will be placed on the register under clauses 2 and 3. That goes to the heart of how the register will operate, yet regulations under clause 2 are likely to contain information about varieties of individuals. It is argued that parliamentarians should be given the opportunity to reject parts of them, and the best way to ensure that there is full scrutiny is to require an amendable report to be prepared prior to the tabling of an order.
The children, age and accountability issues are all addressed by amendments Nos. 11, 17 and 127, none of which I propose to press to a Division, but all of which merit some debate.