Clause 2 - Individuals entered in Register
Identity Cards Bill
9:15 am
Patrick Mercer (Shadow Minister (Homeland Security), (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Newark, Conservative)
I will also speak to amendments Nos. 17 and 18, which are complementary to amendment No. 12, and I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) will speak to amendment No. 126.
On the surface, amendment No. 12, may seem simple and straightforward, and we have already touched on one or two aspects of it. Clearly, its purpose is to try to define the individuals who will be entered in the register and the limitations that will be placed upon them. First and foremost, we would like the age in subsection (2)(a) to be raised from 16 to 18. However, before coming to that, I would be interested to know from the Minister the upper age limit at which identity cards should be carried, and information about the cards put on the register in the first place.
We have discussed on previous amendments the fact that the elderly will find the requirement extremely stressful. I fear that by now the Committee probably knows the members of my family better than the family of anyone else in the Room; that leads me to introduce my mother into the debate. My mother had an identity card, a gas mask and other bits and pieces during the war, when circumstances were in some ways not dissimilar to those we are discussing today. When I had the privilege of serving on the previous Standing Committee that considered the Bill I discussed it with my parents and my mother said, ''What's the problem with an identity register and an identity card? I had one during the war, carried it happily and had nothing to fear. It proved and demonstrated that I wasn't a Nazi''—although that is something we sometimes doubt in the family. I told her that that made a lot of sense, but now it looks as if everyone from 16 to we know not what age will have to surrender 50 or more pieces of information about themselves and then register for the card, probably in several years' time—not to mention the cost, which I am sure we will discuss at length later.
My mother was 10 years younger than my father, but none the less she is an elderly lady in her mid-70s. She pointed out that by the time she is likely to get a card, she will be pushing 80. She asked whether it was really necessary for her to have her fingerprints taken and her iris scanned. How likely is it that she is a terrorist? Clearly, not at all. Much more importantly and realistically, how likely is it that someone will want to use the identity of an 80-year old woman to defraud the Government, or to carry out a serious crime or act of terrorism? I think that it is pretty unlikely, and I would be grateful if the Minister would reassure us that the elderly will not have to go through the stressful process of being assessed for information for the register and the card. What upper age limit does the Minister intend to introduce, to spare the elderly from those stresses and keep the cost of the card down?
When discussing amendments yesterday we heard that for every piece of information, every individual who must register, every individual who must go forward for a card and the issue of every card, there will be a cost, not just to the individual but to the Government. I would therefore have thought it sensible for the Government to tell us the upper age limit.
I shall return to the precise point of the amendment.