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Mr. Clifton-Brown: I wish to probe the Minister a little more on the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry). Will local authorities be given discretion on whether they require an identity card for the payment of housing benefit, for example? If that is to be the case, how would a citizen know whether their local authority required the production of the card and whether it was legitimately able to do so?
The same could apply to hospitals. Will some hospital trusts require the cards to be produced and others not, or will there be uniformity across the country? How much discretion will there be?
Mr. Browne: That will be set out in regulations, which will be consulted on at the appropriate time. It is not for me to say at this stage; we are so far away from compulsion. The hon. Gentleman mentions one service, housing benefit, that provides payment and another, the NHS, that provides a service free of charge. Producing the card could not be made a compulsory condition of the provision of those services until there was full compulsion on the card itself.
At some time, there will need to be consultation with the service users and others on what is appropriate and what benefits such compulsion would bring. Regulations, subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, would have to be introduced. I cannot imagine that such regulations could be enacted without people knowing what was going on. People would be aware of such a significant step, and those providing the services would have the responsibility of ensuring that those to whom the new regulations applied were notified about them. There would have to be a lead-in time. The configuration of the regulations will be a matter for that time. Such decisions will be made once confidence in the scheme and the card has been built up.
Mr. Oaten: I understand that the Minister does not want to say whether there will be regional variations on whether people will need the cards for access to public services. Given the Government's determination to use the cards to crack down on benefit fraud, surely the requirement would have to be national and uniform. Otherwise, individuals would go to different parts of the country where they would know that they do not have to have a card, and could abuse the system.
Mr. Browne: The simple answer is that benefit regulations apply uniformly across the United Kingdom. Regulations on NHS treatment do not apply uniformly because, for example, the Scottish Parliament makes decisions about the provision of that public service. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon has raised that issue on a number of
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occasions. However, that is not about the identity card scheme. There will be no discrimination in relation to the scheme across the country, although decisions may well be made, for example, by the Scottish Parliament about what level of proof of identity will be required for a person to access NHS treatment. That would be a matter entirely for the Scottish Parliament. People in the Committee may disagree with devolution, but that is what it is about.
That does not undermine this scheme, which is about providing opportunities. The Government, who are responsible for the provision of NHS services across England and Wales, will make a decision about access; that will almost certainly be uniform and there will be no discrimination. It would not be appropriate for there to be discrimination.
Mr. Oaten: The Minister is now beginning to answer the question that was put to him earlier. Would there be a difference between local authorities? Would there be a difference between primary care trusts? We are in England, never mind devolution. The hon. Gentleman is saying that there will be a uniform system throughout England and that primary care trusts, for example, will not be able to opt in or opt out of it, so there will be no particular focus in certain areas where there may be worry about so-called health tourism.
Mr. Browne: I cannot be prescriptive about how such matters will be phased out. It does not seem, however, that arguments can be made for discrimination of that nature. I stand before the Committee and, if there is a problem on my part, I apologise. I do not know every detail about where the powers of local authorities lie. What I am about to say might be contradicted: local authorities exercise appropriately and are answerable politically to their electorate for decisions that they make about some services.
We need some flexibility that allows those layers of responsibility to be properly reflected. The best example of that is devolution. I understand the difference between the provision of certain services and political accountability in Scotland as opposed to the rest of the United Kingdom and I understand, to a degree, that if there were a devolved Administration in Northern Ireland what the position would be. There will be the opportunity for flexibility for those who provide the services there. Indeed, politicians from Scotland have suggested what their attitude would be towards accessing public services via the identity card. It will be entirely a matter for them. It will not be helpful if I try to envisage each set of circumstances, because I could not do that. The clause is drawn in such a way that reflects those responsibilities. I shall not bind together other individual organisations and authorities, because I do not have the power to do so, in any event.
May I deal quickly with the points on which the amendment concentrates? Why does the provision cover ''an ID card'' and
''other evidence of registrable facts''?
Well, the answer is comparatively simple. People might need access to public services, but might have lost their
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card and not received a replacement. Such people should not be denied access to services if they can via registrable facts access the services and prove their identity. That is the beauty of the system. It will not depend on people carrying cards—a point that we might come to in more detail in a couple of minutes.
Mr. Malins: I might have misunderstood the clause, for which I apologise. When I examined it more carefully, I realised that it says that public services are free; that they are services for which there can be no charge. Am I right? As a result, no service can demand from me an ID. That must cover most public services.
Mr. Browne: We may well come to such matters in more stark relief under another amendment, but the reference to public services that are free of charge does not deny the opportunity for the providers of public services to require the production of an identity card or access under clause 15 before it is compulsory to have a card. Post-compulsion is a different matter. At that time, there will be a point when registrable facts for each individual can be implied because they will be on the register. There will be a different position.
However, people may have forgotten their card, lost it or have put it into a reader that does not work because it is damaged and no one knows about it. In those circumstances, people should not be denied access to public services if, through registrable facts, they can prove their identity. Equally, there may be normal circumstances in which the public service provider would accept the card, but has suspicions about it. It may say that it wants the card and registrable facts for that individual on that occasion because it is suspicious of the circumstances and the way in which the card has been presented. It is appropriate that circumstances allow regulations to be drafted to cover those eventualities.
Mr. Curry: A provider could ask for the card, which would presumably carry the person's current or most recent address. If it asked for the registrable facts and the person had been to prison, those facts would include the address at Her Majesty's prison, so the person's past would be revealed to a provider, although the card would not do so. Have I misunderstood it?
Mr. Browne: Yes. The regulations will be drawn in such a way that the person will be entitled to access information that can prove identity, not historical information that may need to be kept in relation to the card for other security reasons, or for audit reasons associated with the individual, who may want to check against facts.
I have already explained that the registrable facts to which people will have access in the context of proving identity will be restricted to proof of identity. That would not cover the situation that the hon. Gentleman describes, and would not give people access to historical information that is none of their business.
Mr. Oaten: I am sorry to intervene a lot, but I am trying to be clear in my mind. If the purpose of having the card for public services is to deal with problems of benefit fraud, surely just having the identity will not be
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very helpful, because we all know that identity is not the main means of benefit fraud. The real problem is individuals over-claiming, or patterns. Surely those services would need access to more than just the identity, including access to other information to prove whether a person is working and over-claiming. If they are to tackle fraud they will need access to information other than a person's identity.
Mr. Browne: The fact that a person is working at the time is not a registrable fact. This is about proving people's identity. The security of the benefits system is a matter for the Benefits Agency, which uses relevant regulations and requirements to obtain information from people. It is not about giving people additional information of that nature. Of course, information that proves entitlement may need to be accessed, but that will not be the sort of information, such as historical information, that the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon suggests.
Why would the NHS need historical information about whether a person has been in prison to prove their identity? That is not relevant. The NHS may, however, want to know whether that person is a prisoner now, but I suspect that that would be obvious if they were brought from prison to a hospital. [Interruption.] I may have misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman's point. If he wants to try again, I may be a wee bit more perceptive.
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