Identity Cards Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:00 pm on 16 January 2006.

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Photo of The Earl of Erroll The Earl of Erroll Crossbench 7:00, 16 January 2006

My Lords, I do not mean to cause difficulties; I am trying to be helpful to the noble Baroness—the listening Minister. Following what the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, said, I am looking at Amendment No. 17 which is in the same group. It is a definition in the general interpretation clause, Clause 43. It defines "place of residence" and "resides" and there is an amendment to that which says "and cognate expressions". Of course, it does not define the word "resident" itself, so that may need to be put in. I was not sure what a "cognate expression" was and I wondered whether it included "stayed" or "lived" but not "domiciled". I hope that it does not include "domiciled", or I can see problems with the tax authorities and much difficulty in getting people to register things, which is the whole intention.

However, my attention was drawn to the fact that all this is subject to regulations under subsection (10) of the same Clause 43, regulations defining what an address is. That has been worrying me slightly because under Clause 12 that would presumably apply from the moment the first person is added forcibly, when they are issued with a new passport, to the national identity register. That is the requirement to notify any changes. It will be an offence attracting a £10,000 civil penalty should one not notify any changes. Presumably that will affect people about two years after the start; otherwise the register will be out of date before the last people are put on it.

What is a valid address for the regulations? This needs to be looked at because at the moment the effort to bring together the Royal Mail postal address database, the Ordnance Survey address point database and the land and property gazetteers—there is the LLPG and the NLPG—has foundered under copyright problems. Suddenly people realise that there is value in the property rights and, with things being hived off to agencies, they cannot afford to lose value under company law. Equally, local authorities are always starved of cash. So, if they are sitting on something that might be valuable, such as the LLPG, they will want money for it. All that will have to be gone through and dealt with. Otherwise, how will one define a valid address? If someone does not know what is a valid address or it is made very difficult to define a valid address, some people will attract fines of £1,000 from day one. The first people on the register will probably be those with good addresses, so one may have two or three years in which to sort it out, but it is the wrong basis on which to proceed.

One also has to decide how one will define valid overseas addresses. I am just pointing out that in the regulations made under Clause 43(10), although they are not actually dealt with, one needs to start thinking about what will replace the national spatial address infrastructure. Otherwise, we will have complicated regulations and we really will not know how to register a Gypsy in a lay-by or a tramp in a barn or all sorts of other people who one would eventually want to register.