Clause 3 - Information recorded in Register
Identity Cards Bill
2:45 pm
Edward Garnier (Shadow Minister, (Assisted By Shadow Law Officers); Harborough, Conservative)
There we are. Perhaps. What that indicates is not only that the information on the register about me will contain compulsory information that I have to put there, but that it might become a general store cupboard for my entire life, which, for my personal convenience or for the facilitation of the statutory purposes, the Government decide that I should store there as well.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre, yesterday or the day before, told us that huge numbers of bytes of memory would be required on the Government IT system in order to store and accumulate, and to allow the exchange of, that information. We all have our concerns about the Government’s ability to procure and manage IT projects, but I want to know what citizens will have to do in order to satisfy the Secretary of State that the information that must be recorded has got that far and crossed the hurdles of being practicable and appropriate. What does this all mean and what do the Government intend by it, and how will the citizen benefit by the exercise?
Liberal Democrat amendment No. 129 seeks to delete subsection (3), which states that where
“the Secretary of State and an individual have agreed on what is to be recorded about a matter in that individual’s entry in the Register”,
and
“the Secretary of State has given, and not withdrawn, a direction that what is to be recorded in that individual’s case about that matter is to be determined by the agreement”,
that should stand as a “conclusive presumption” that the information to which the direction relates is accurate and complete information about that matter. I want to focus our attention on the expression “conclusive presumption”.
The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and I, and possibly others in the Room, may be familiar with presumptions of one sort or another: some are rebuttable, some are irrebuttable. Some are rebuttable in the course of criminal proceedings but not in civil proceedings, and so on. A conclusive presumption is a fairly concrete dam—a large hurdle—which the citizen, or somebody else who is relying on or who wishes to question the information, will have to overcome. I am concerned about that, but perhaps my concerns will be assisted by the hon. Gentleman.