Clause 1 - The National Identity Register
Identity Cards Bill
11:15 am
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
Thank you, Mr. Gale. I apologise if your comments about conversations were aimed at me, among others.
I understand what members of the Committee want to achieve with the amendment, but to paraphrase an old television advert, it is the “wrong place, wrong time”. As the hon. and learned Member for Harborough suggested, the clause concerns the statutory purpose of the national data registration scheme, and not the powers and not who can or cannot access the data. By the time that we get to clause 45, hon. Members will be bored rigid with the notion that nobody can access the data. People can seek verification of it, but nobody, but nobody, can access it, short of those public agencies that can do so for the national security purposes outlined in the Bill—period. We are talking about a verification process, not an access process.
The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East used a nice example, but it is completely and profoundly wrong. By way of homework, I task him to find out where the Bill says that health records such as those that he mentioned can be kept on the database or that his records and his father’s can be accessed and compared. He will not find any such provision in the Bill.