Clause 22 - Power to authorise other uses of information
Identity Cards Bill
12:00 pm
Andy Burnham (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Home Office; Leigh, Labour)
I hope that I can deal quickly with the amendments. The hon. and learned Gentleman complained earlier that the Government were not listening to some of the concerns. He will know that when the Bill was last debated in Committee there was a fairly detailed discussion on the clause and the then Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), gave a commitment to consider the concerns and to give further thought to the clause. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will be reassured that the clause has been improved in that respect and that the Government have responded to some of the concerns put to the then Minister by the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins).
The clause is more narrowly drawn than it was. I shall mention some of the ways in which it has been improved. As the hon. and learned Gentleman knows, although we expect most of the checks on the register to be done with the consent of the individual, there are circumstances where we will allow them to be done without consent—and we have been discussing those today. However, once the scheme is in operation, it is right to keep open the possibility that there may be other situations in which it becomes necessary, in the public interest, to provide information to other public bodies. It would be wrong to list those bodies in the Bill now and wrong to require further primary legislation as the logical extension of the measure, which is why the clause is drafted as it is.
It might help Committee members if I give a few examples of how we envisage the power being used. For instance, it might be sensible to allow local government to have access to the information. The hon. and learned Gentleman knows that local government administers the payment of housing benefit. In fraud investigations it would be sensible, from its point of view, for it to have access to the register. The fire and ambulance services could also be beneficiaries of access when verifying identity against the register following a major accident.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe (Mr. Betts) raised the possibility that the register may, at some point, be used for electoral registration. In future, particularly in respect of measures to combat electoral fraud, the national identity register could provide a sensible way to maintain the integrity of the electoral register and tackle, nay eliminate, electoral fraud.
There are circumstances in which it is sensible, for good public administration, for us to extend the bodies who could benefit through secondary legislation, with the key proviso that Parliament decides that it is necessary to do so.
The power in the clause is subject to the affirmative order-making procedure. An organisation could not be added without parliamentary approval. That was added after the previous discussion—it was to be done under the negative procedure before. The Government have listened to the concerns that were expressed previously and have strengthened the Bill in that way. The authorisation procedure provided for in clause 23 would be subject to applicable oversight arrangements under the national identity commissioner.
The power was significantly narrowed during the parliamentary progress of the Bill in the previous Session and further safeguards have been added. The information in paragraph 9 of schedule 1 is now excluded. Information can be provided only to bodies that are public authorities under the Human Rights Act 1998. That is spelled out in the definitions contained in the back of the Bill. A further significant safeguard has been added to this version of the Bill: subsection (2) now provides that the order-making power can be used only when the provision of information is necessary in the public interest, as defined in clause 1(4).
Amendment No. 77 would insert a requirement for any provision under clause 22 to be proportionate in its interference with an individual’s private and family life and to be
“for the purpose of ... the protection of public safety or public health, or ... the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
Nobody in the Committee would have any objection to those reasons, and I understand the hon. and learned Gentleman’s concern. However, I reassure him that the amendment is unnecessary because of subsection (2) and the full application of the Human Rights Act to the Bill. Under article 8 of the European convention on human rights, a public authority must not interfere with a person’s right to a private or family life except in limited circumstances. Those include when such interference is
“in accordance with the law ... in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
That is a detailed list. However, we are confident and can give the hon. and learned Gentleman the assurance that the Bill fully complies with the Human Rights Act. His amendment, which lists the circumstances in which information may be provided, is more limited than the provisions of the ECHR. We believe that agreeing to it could mean that the scheme was not able to maximise its benefits.
The amendment would exclude the ability to provide information without consent to any additional organisations when that was in the interests of national security, economic well-being or the prevention or detection of crime. That would mean that we might not be able to provide information to local authorities for fraud-prevention purposes, for example.
I hope that Opposition Members will accept that we listened to the concerns that were expressed by their Front-Bench team in the previous Session. The safeguards provided under the subsection have been significantly strengthened and the subsection’s scope has been significantly narrowed. I do not think that Opposition Members need fear anything from the bodies that we have in mind. As I say, local government is an obvious example of such a body, but the information might also be useful to the fire or emergency services.
The possibility of using the register in respect of electoral registration should be considered by Members on both sides of the Committee, given the number of people who currently fall off the electoral register. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Attercliffe made that important point.
For all those reasons and because of the final safeguard of the House deciding whether the power would ever be invoked, Opposition Members can feel reassured that they have been listened to and that the clause includes the necessary safeguards, given the Human Rights Act and the access to information provisions. I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.