Clause 2 - Individuals entered in Register
Identity Cards Bill
5:15 pm
Mr Richard Allan (Shadow Spokesperson for the Cabinet Office, Cabinet Office; Sheffield, Hallam, Liberal Democrat)
We support amendments Nos. 17 and 127. They invite the Minister to make that most magnanimous of concessions with which we have become familiar in Standing Committees—the negative to affirmative resolution concession. It is a bone that can helpfully be thrown to Opposition parties from time to time. Essentially, that is what is being done, although it is more dressed up on this occasion as there is the addition of the report, so it is a slightly fancier affirmative resolution procedure. However, essentially we are seeking to ensure that there are additional parliamentary safeguards for any potential changes.
That is significant. The very first line of the clause states:
''An entry must be made in the Register''.
In other words, this is the big measure in terms of making the register happen. The clause defines the category of people who must be put on the register and those who have no entitlement; and then there is the curious loophole in subsection (4), which we will come to when we address a later amendment.
Like the hon. Member for Woking, we examined whether the age limit should be 16 or 18. We thought about it long and hard because, in general, we are trying to make the Bill as uncomprehensive as possible. However, although one of the possible ways to do that was to raise the age limit to 18, that would have been inconsistent with other policies that we have proposed, such as for votes at 16 and the establishment of a threshold for adulthood in terms of access to services and so forth at that age—and we never like to be inconsistent, so we did not feel that we could support changing the age.
I can understand why collecting a database for people under 16 would be difficult from a technical point of view; the biometrics are not stable, certainly in terms of such things as face recognition. There are also questions that will need to be addressed about the potential interaction with other databases, such as those that are being established for child protection purposes. Again, in the context of subsection (4), there may be some interest in how the database will interact with other data sources.
We did not feel that we should support the change from 16 to 18, but we do feel that it is important that we have a more comprehensive procedure for any potential changes. For political reasons, the Government may wish to look at the pensioner issue, which the hon. Member for Woking rightly raised. It will be politically difficult to drag 80-year-olds down to a centre to be fingerprinted and iris-checked.
One further point of clarification would be helpful. Clause 2 refers specifically to the register, but any age provisions in respect of the issuing of ID cards will be dealt with separately under clause 6, so it is perfectly possible for the Government to say that everyone must go on the register, but then to come back with an order under clause 6 saying that ID cards and the bit of that that has to be paid for is compulsory only for people in a certain age bracket—and not compulsory for those over 65, for example. Therefore, in spite of this clause, the Government still have some get-out options if they want to avoid charging pensioners £85 for the pleasure of going to have their fingerprints taken and irises scanned; they could do that under clause 6 by having a different age prescription in the regulations that impose compulsion with regard to the issuing of ID cards.