Clause 14 - Use of information for verification or otherwise with consent
Identity Cards Bill
1:34 pm
Tony McNulty (Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office; Harrow East, Labour)
Again, we are considering important amendments that go to the heart of the issues at play in the clause. As hon. Gentlemen have suggested, the amendments would, in their various ways, make it a requirement for an individual to give particular types of consent before the Secretary of State provided information to organisations wanting to verify their identity. We take on board the issues at the heart of the amendments, but they are dealt with in other ways.
Amendments Nos. 173 and 117 define consent as something that is explicit and informed. On balance, we do not consider the amendments to be necessary. We think that it is self-explanatory that consent for a check to be made on the register must be freely given by a person who understands that his card or, as the case may be, his biometric information, is being used to verify his identity. We do not consider the term “consent” when used in this context to be ambiguous and thus to require a statutory definition, especially in the context of strong limitations on the data available for that verification process and some of the other elements in the Bill, which I will discuss in a moment.
It is incumbent on the Government, as and when this process is introduced, albeit on a voluntary basis in the first instance, to make clear to people how it will work; its benefits, both in the voluntary capacity and subsequently in terms of the compulsory registration elements; how those elements are to be enforced; their rights concerning who can have access to the verification process, not the data; and—to hark back to the previous group of amendments—how an individual can access the data that are stored about them under the Data Protection Act 1998. I agree that that education and awareness process should be gone through as a scheme of such importance is undertaken, but we do not need to define “consent” in the Bill.
Amendment No. 172, tabled by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, would make it a requirement that an application for the provision of information is with the “informed” authority of the individual. Amendment No. 227 would require the authority to be “express”. Again, in the context of what I just said about consent, it should be taken as read that authority means a freely given and informed authority. I should also mention that under clause 14(5)(a) there is a power to make provision by regulations as to
“how an authority for the purposes of subsection (1)(a) is to be given”.
In that provision, and elsewhere, we can be explicit about what things mean for more vulnerable groups, such as those with learning disabilities and others. That is a fair and serious point.
Amendment No. 53 would mean that an individual could choose to consent to the provision of any part of the information falling in subsections (2) and (3). We resist that, because, as I have said, the clause already sets out a limited list of information that may be provided in response to a verification application. We are not talking about all 51 assorted items, many of them internal to the machine and the process, being readily available, as well as the biometrics for the verification process. There is a power to make regulations to impose further restrictions if necessary. As I have said, it is our intention that by virtue of the accreditation process provided for in clause 14(6) organisations will be provided only with information that supports their business need—that is to say, a limited part of the individual’s entry as permitted under clause 14(1).
Those safeguards, limitations and definitions of which data will and will not be available are in place, all wrapped round the notion of consent in the clause. To suggest putting in the Bill one of the various elements of consent is unnecessary and, dare I say it, otiose. As and when we return to these matters, perhaps at a later stage of the parliamentary process but as early as permissible, I will try to give the Committee sight of at least the headline and framework of the regulations under clause 14(5) that will define authority. That, rather than unnecessary amendments to the Bill, may be the way to allay fears about consent and authority. I take the same stance on amendments Nos. 51 and 52 and the notion of written consent. For all those reasons and because of the assurances that I have given, I ask that the amendment be withdrawn.