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Mr. Garnier: I am not sure whether, in providing that answer a moment ago, the Government applied their mind to the Parliament Act 1949. If the Lords refuse to accept a proposal contained in the report, whether modified or not, for more than the statutory time stipulated in the Parliament Act, will that Act bite or will we have to rehearse the procedure under clause 7 again and again?
Mr. Carmichael: I do not know the answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman's question. I suspect that nobody in the Room does. As the Under-Secretary said, the process is a novel one.
We seem to be tying ourselves in knots for no good reason. If what is wanted is a process that involves proper scrutiny of an important change to the Bill, it is always open to the Government to use the Standing Orders of the House as they exist and bring forward a piece of primary legislation. It seems to me that we are going all around the houses and risking all sorts of difficulties for no good reason. We have a perfectly adequate system.
The Under-Secretary and other Ministers know that, although primary legislation normally takes a significant time, and properly so, it does not always do so. In the last Parliament, I was involved in a number of pieces of legislation relating to Northern Ireland in which all stages in the House of Commons—at least—were gone through in a day. Often, the whole thing was done, and something formed between ourselves and the other place, in two or three days. If there is any urgency, primary legislation need not take long. When there is urgency, it is generally accepted by all parts of the House that it is necessary for matters to proceed.
We are dealing with this issue on a hot and muggy day. We will have the opportunity to return when the leaves are turning on the trees. I suggest that the Minister takes the benefit of that intervening period to consider whether more detail or specification is required on this clause. As things stand, I fear that
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the Committee would be remiss to let it stand part of the Bill.
Mr. Garnier: I agree with the hon. Gentleman, both for the reasons that he put forward and because, when we return to deal with the matter on Report, I would not lose much money if I put a bet down that we will have part of a day to discuss the remaining stages of the Bill. Perhaps we will have from 3.30 pm, subject to statements, until 9 pm. Then there will be an hour for Third Reading. That happened to the last night's Bill. I am not convinced that Parliament is allowing itself as a whole, let alone the Committee, proper scrutiny of this hugely complicated area of new legislation.
5.45 pm
Neither Minister is entirely familiar with the territory. That is not their fault; they are new to the Department and this is a whole new area of legislation. However, not only is it new, but it will wholly alter the relationship between the individual and the state. We are advancing in a rather haphazard way. We accept in good faith the words of the Under-Secretary when he says, ''Oh well, we'll sort it out this way, or that way,'' but we are advancing in the absence of these statutory instruments, the code of practice and all the information that we, as dutiful legislators, need now in order to see whether this is a proper way forward. So I, too, am deeply sceptical about the good sense, or even the common sense, of allowing the clause to stand part of the Bill.
The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Mr. Tony McNulty): Happily, this clause stand part debate has been very useful. The points raised by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland are entirely fair. The short answer to his question on parliamentary procedure is that the Bill, and the passing of the Bill, will ensure that there is parliamentary procedure. However, he raised an interesting point.
As people will know, the genesis of the provisions is the fact that we regard compulsion to register as the end goal. We regard the step from voluntary to compulsory as a serious one. That is why we sought to put in the Bill a scrutiny process that would allow the House proper time to scrutinise these matters carefully, with due diligence. But what has been said raises interesting points. Not the least of those, as hon. Members will know, is the fact that the Parliament Act does not cover subordinate legislation, and so that route is out, as a safeguard.
One interpretation—I give just one—is that the super-affirmative procedure could be seen as a rather crude algorithmic loop, in which something starts here, goes there, and, modified or otherwise, comes back. If it does not get to where it was headed, it starts again, with no apparent escape from that scrutiny loop. That is an entirely fair point. We put that down the last time the Bill was determined to be helpful to the House in terms of scrutiny. I assure the Committee that we shall take back and consider those comments, albeit with the clause intact, because that is how these things work.
We will not lose sight of the points made about scrutiny, but equally we will not lose sight of the points
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at least implied by hon. Members about the primacy of this House over the other place. It is the balance between those two matters that we really need to achieve. If it is not apparent to all Members that that balance has been achieved, or that there is practicability to this method of scrutiny, those are serious points that we need to take back and consider. However, because of the quaint way in which this place works, I would still rather like the Committee to confirm that, for now at least, the clause can stand part of the Bill, although we do take those concerns seriously, and we will respond to them in due course.
Mr. Garnier: I do not know whether the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland wanted to respond to the Minister, but I thank the Minister for his offer.
I do not want to be accused of being unduly cynical, and I certainly do not wish to accuse the Minister or saying something that he did not mean, but it would be perfectly proper, and indeed our duty at this stage, to hold the whip hand, in so far as we have a Whip in our hand—
Mr. McNulty: Your Whip is not here, is he?
Mr. Garnier: I made that joke first.
In so far as we have any power at all, I think that it would be perfectly right for us to seek to divide the Committee to remind the House that we left this matter in a state of irresolution, if I can put it that way. If the Minister comes back on Report with a new version or a better explanation of how the Government think that they will go forward, for consideration in either this House or the other place, we will have done everybody a service, but he cannot at this stage dissuade me from seeking to divide the Committee.
Mr. McNulty: I said that we needed to push the clause through, because that is how this place works, and in that context I fully understand why the Opposition will want to register opposition to the clause. I have no problem with that at all. As to the hon. and learned Gentleman's earlier comment, I would never use the term ''unduly'' in respect of him.
Mr. Garnier: I cannot remember using the word ''unduly'' either in respect of myself or anybody else. I think the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland would like to say a few words.
Mr. Carmichael: I wish merely to place on record my appreciation of the tone and content of the Minister's comments. I remain of the view that we would be modifying an inferior system by modifying clause 7. My preference remains for amendment—or modification—by primary legislation. Accordingly, I would vote against the clause standing part of the Bill.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 10, Noes 5.
Division No. 11]
AYES
Baird, Vera
Blackman-Woods, Dr. Roberta
Borrow, Mr. David S.
Burnham, Andy
Drew, Mr. David
McNulty, Mr. Tony
Mountford, Kali
Palmer, Dr. Nick
Robertson, John
Ryan, Joan
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NOES
Carmichael, Mr. Alistair
Ellwood, Mr. Tobias
Garnier, Mr. Edward
Mercer, Patrick
Wallace, Mr. Ben
Question accordingly agreed to.
Clause 7 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 8
Issue etc. of ID cards
Patrick Mercer: I beg to move amendment No. 42, in page 7, line 7, after 'issued', insert 'free of charge'.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 169, in clause 12, page 11, line 17, at end add—
'(7) The Secretary of State shall make no charge for changes to the Register required by this section.'.
No. 208, in clause 37, page 31, line 23, leave out
'for the modification of entries'.
No. 209, in page 31, line 25, leave out 'or modification'.
No. 210, in page 31, line 24, after 'issue', insert
'(but not re-issue or replacement).'.
No. 211, in page 31, line 26, after 'issue', insert
'(but not re-issue or replacement).'.
No. 186, in page 31, line 39, at end insert
'but no fee shall be imposed for a card issued in consequence of an order by the Secretary of State for compulsory registration.'.
Patrick Mercer: This clause is one of the most important in the Bill. It moves on from the identity register and the number of procedures for orders that are set out under the previous clauses. We are now talking about the thing itself: the card that in several years time, if the Government have their way, we will all end up owning, although, apparently we will not be forced to carry it nor will anybody be able to tell us to show that we have it.
I want to start by discussing the lead amendment, which I hope, despite the innocence of its words, will point up the severity of the cards and the cost of the whole ill-thought-through scheme. The amendment would alter clause 8(1), part of which reads:
''For the purposes of this Act an ID card is a card which—
(a) is issued to an individual by the Secretary of State, or as part of or together with a designated document''.
Our amendment would mean that paragraph (a) would read ''is issued free of charge to an individual by the Secretary of State, or as part of or together with a designated document''. I hope that it goes to the heart of the questions of whether we need the card at all; if we do, how the Government intend to fund it; and the public reaction both to the character of the card and to having to ante up the sum from their pockets to afford it in the first place.
Before I dwell on the details of the card's cost, I want to talk about the opportunity cost. I have just heard an example, which I and others were considering at the weekend, of a wartime national registration identity card. It was a simple piece of cardboard on two sides. I imagine that its cost was almost nothing. Most people believe that this nation's only identity
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card was carried during the war and suspended shortly after it. That is absolutely right. However, it is worth considering the fact that in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, a modification was introduced to the driving licence that placed it wholly at odds with those carried in the rest of the United Kingdom. In England, one's driving licence was a perfectly simple piece of green paper. There was no photograph or biometric, to use today's phrase, on the card. However, in Northern Ireland a driving licence with a photograph was introduced—in 1978, if memory serves me right. That sticks in my mind because at the time I was a serving soldier, having completed two or three tours in Northern Ireland, and I was returning for another tour. We were told that the driving licence had been introduced with a view not to securing the future of drivers or making it easier or less easy to procure a driving licence, but to having a useful knock-on effect for the purposes of controlling terrorists.
I am sure that every Member knows the nature of Northern Ireland. It has a very dispersed population, among whom the ownership of cars per head is extremely high. On top of that, it has been identified that the use of cars was a sine qua non for the prosecution of terrorism on both sides of the political divide. Issuing an advanced driving licence made sense; it would be a very useful tool for the control of terrorism by the security forces. That licence was an extremely simple document compared with what is proposed today, although it was marginally more complex than the wartime version. I say again that it had a photograph on it.
The opportunity cost of providing that driving licence was considerable. I cannot quote sums, but other security measures had to be forgone to include this driving licence. The effect was quite simple. On a rain-soaked lane in south Armagh at 3 o'clock in the morning, if a patrol was sent forward to intercept a car as it came speeding along a lane, the soldier or policeman inspecting the card, unless they had been specifically told to the contrary, would take a cursory glance at it and say, ''On your way. You've got a card; you must be a good guy. If you're a good guy, I will detain you no longer.''
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough used the phrase ''flash and go'' the other day. I had not thought of the issue in those terms, but that licence involved precisely that. The danger of introducing an identity card, particularly for security and counter-terrorism, is that it does not become a proof of identity, but a pass. Once someone possesses such a card, particularly a complex card that has been through several biometrics iterations, it becomes, for the security worker—soldier, policeman or whoever—a pass into the inner sanctum.
We all carry similar passes to let us into the House of Commons. That is a slightly different matter because our faces are generally recognised by the excellent security staff here. None the less, it stands to reason that unless the holder is carefully looked at, the possession of a card—particularly a complex one—starts to work to the benefit of the terrorist or criminal.
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