Identity documents act

Status of the bill: Enacted

Main purpose of the bill:

To help reverse the erosion of civil liberties by abolishing ID cards and destroying the national identity register.

Main points of the bill:

*Provides for the cancellation of all ID cards within one month of royal assent.

*Provides for the removal of the statutory requirement to issue ID cards on royal assent.

*Controversy

The scrapping of ID cards and the abolition of the national identity register are part of a programme of measures the new coalition government has pledged to introduce "to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion."

In its 'programme for government' the coalition says it believes "that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties." This new bill will repeal the Identity Cards Act 2006 which legislated for the introduction of ID cards.

Both the prime minister and the deputy prime minister have over the years argued consistently against ID cards. David Cameron accused Labour of having created "an increasingly Orwellian surveillance state - symbolised by the simultaneously ineffective and intrusive ID cards scheme". Nick Clegg described the scheme as "wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive" and said: "By taking swift action to scrap it, we are making it clear that this government won't sacrifice people's liberty for the sake of ministers' pet projects."

The move was welcomed enthusiastically by civil liberties groups and many others who have campaigned vociferously for the abolition of ID cards since they were first proposed by Labour in 2002. The human rights group Liberty said: "ID cards and the NIR were a costly and completely unnecessary intrusion into our personal lives and signalled a dangerous shift in the relationship between the individual and the state".

Nevertheless ID cards do have their supporters apart from those in the Labour party, most notably the police who suggest that greater awareness of the benefits of ID cards would help to increase the level of public support for them. The Police Federation says it has backed the scheme for over a decade "not as a knee-jerk reaction to any one specific or emotive event, but following objective appraisal."

The organisation contends that: "In reality misconceptions about identity cards simply do not stand up to scrutiny. They are a tried and tested law enforcement tool abroad and would make Britain a safer place in which to live, work or visit."

Just under 15,000 ID cards had been issued by June 2010 of which 3000 were supplied free of charge to airside workers. The Opposition was highly critical of the government's refusal to permit any kind of rebate for those who had paid the £30 fee charged for an ID card.

Labour sought an amendment to allow the cards to remain valid until their expiry date, claiming there would be "a real sense of injustice" amongst those who had paid for a card they could no longer use. Shadow minister Meg Hillier said: "To scrap, spitefully, the existing cards seems ridiculous."

Labour also proposed that if a person who had an ID card applied for a new passport within 12 months of the act being passed, the fee charged should be reduced by £30 as compensation.

But both proposals were rejected by the government on the grounds that the taxpayer would be faced with a hefty bill. According to Immigration minister Damian Green, the cost of maintaining the infrastructure over the next ten years for the cards already issued would be between £50 million and £60 million.

*Cancels the national identity register.

*Provides for the destruction of all data held on the register within one month of royal assent.

Closes the office of the identity commissioner.

*Controversy

The Opposition questioned how the destruction of the database, "which has taken time and money to establish", would benefit the British public. Shadow minister Meg Hillier said not only would the data on the NIR be destroyed, but the "well and slowly built IT system that would have securely held fingerprints" would also be removed. And she asked why information from the NIR could not be transferred to the passport database for those who wished to keep their card.

Immigration minister Damian Green said the migration of data to the passport database would breach the Data Protection Act 1998. It would "process data for a purpose other than that for which it was obtained" and would therefore be illegal. And he insisted that destroying the NIR would have no effect on the passport database, saying: "To suggest that the bill will in some way make our passports less secure is not just wrong, but irresponsible."

The minister also said that whilst the government recognised the state could hold information on its citizens "when there are legitimate and proportionate reasons for doing so" and where it can be "justified on the grounds of national security, public protection or preventing and detecting serious and organised crime", he had seen no evidence to support the benefits of sustaining this "enormous and intrusive database." He added: "This is a matter of principle - we do not believe that the government should hold all that biometric data on innocent people."

The human rights and law reform organisation JUSTICE fully supported the destruction of information held on the NIR and expressed the hope that this move would form part of a broader review of existing government databases. The human rights group Liberty remained concerned about the amount of information being held on government databases relating to foreign nationals and called on the government to review the statutory powers under which this information is retained.

*Provides for the re-enactment of certain necessary provisions of the 2006 act including some criminal offences (possession or use of false identity documents) that are commonly used for identity documents.

*Controversy

JUSTICE questioned whether it was necessary to retain three criminal offences created by the 2006 act relating to possession and use of false identity documents. The organisation suggested that it would be better to "revert to the pre-existing law in this area", noting that the use of false documents was already covered by "a variety of criminal offences" well before the 2006 act.

Provisions relating to the sharing of data also raised concerns. Clause 10 of the bill permits data to be shared for the purpose of verifying information provided in relation to an application for a passport or the withdrawal of a passport.

The campaigning group NO2ID said that these broad data-sharing powers relating to passports would "immediately apply to millions of people, not just a few thousand willing ID guinea-pigs." The group called for the clause to be withdrawn, contending that it would "facilitate the reconstruction of an ID scheme in a slightly different form, based on the passports database - as proposed by several ID proponents, most recently David Blunkett."

Although the clause was agreed to without a division during Commons committee stage, Immigration minister Damian Green undertook to give further consideration to the points raised before the subsequent stages of the bill, to see whether the clause could be improved upon.

Progress of the bill:

The Identity Documents Bill was included in the Queen's Speech on 25th May 2010.

Commons:
First reading: 26.05.10 Second reading: 09.06.10 Committee stage: 29.06.10 01.07.10 06.07.10 Report stage: 15.09.10 Third Reading: 15.09.10

Lords:
First reading: 05.10.10 Second reading: 18.10.10 Committee Stage: 01.11.10 03.11.10 Report Stage: 17.11.10 Third Reading: 24.11.10

Ping Pong: 14.12.10 21.12.10 Royal Assent: 21.12.10