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Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain 51 An extremely telling aspect of the debates on ID cards was the weakness of the justifications put forward for their introduction. Possibly the strongest argument in their favour is that entry on the NIR and possession of an identity card will improve access to public services. Even the scheme’s most entrenched opponents could not disagree that a single identifier, which will be the point of entry, contact and verification, could be of assistance in gaining access to a range of public services from the NHS, to state benefits, libraries, and so on. However this hardly featured as a justification when the Government was selling the scheme. Instead the focus was primarily on helping fight terrorism and crime. As time progressed other reasons were put forward. These ranged from dealing with illegal immigration to combating identity and benefit fraud. During debate on the Bill, Liberty and others argued strongly that none of these arguments stood up to any degree of detailed examination. It might be argued that there was the potential for the NIR and identity card to be of some assistance in providing solutions. However, few outside Government with any detailed knowledge of the scheme seemed at all convinced that the NIR was the most cost effective and least intrusive way of dealing with the problems the Government maintained would be solved. Many IT experts believed (and are still arguing) that the sheer scale and cost of the scheme make it unlikely to ever work. Liberty’s Parliamentary briefings on the Bill explained its concerns over the effectiveness of the justifications, and there is no need to revisit these in any detail again 113 . It is, however, worth pointing out that even after the 7 July 2005 attacks in London, the then Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, accepted that ID cards would not have prevented the bombings. Tony McNulty, the minister in charge of the scheme, in the Autumn of 2005 admitted that they had ‘oversold’ the benefits of the scheme at a meeting of the Fabian Society. Such admissions were more widely reflected in the general change of tone adopted by advocates of the scheme. Rather than adopting the ‘panacea’ approach of the early days, emphasis was more on how the NIR as a whole would be one of several factors helping fight terrorism, crime and so on. So why was the focus on keeping us safe rather than getting better public services One practical argument is that access to better public services can only be a convincing justification for a voluntary scheme allowing people to ‘opt in’ if they so wish. However, the need for a commercially viable scheme meant there needed to be a take up rate that guaranteed a set and significant number of people every year. This could only be achieved through a compulsory scheme in which a certain percentage of the population would be expected to sign up every year. Until the final stages of the Bill there was a power allowing the Secretary of State to require registration of groups of individuals identified by an order made in Parliament. This was removed as part of a ‘compromise’ in order to ensure the Bill was passed by the House of Lords. New legislation will now be needed before the Secretary of State can require registration. However, a lack of compulsion would have effectively ruined the Bill as only those who volunteered to register would be entered on the NIR. Because of this the Government insisted on keeping the power to require people to register when applying for other ‘designated’ documents 114 . The passport was identified as being the appropriate document as it guarantees that most of the population will need to renew (and therefore register on the NIR) every ten years. This led to a rather farcical situation. The Government claimed the removal of the Secretary of State’s power to require registration made the 113 All Liberty’s briefings are available at www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk 114 Sections 4 and 5 IDCA
52 Overlooked: Surveillance and personal privacy in modern Britain scheme no longer compulsory. However, it had ensured that nearly 10% of the population would be required to register annually. This effectively provided the compulsion necessary to ensure the scheme might be financially viable. Another reason for focusing on public safety rather than public services is that the scope and justification for information retention and dissemination would be much broader. The range of the NIR is likely to increase over the years as parliamentary orders permit the holding of increasingly sensitive personal data available to an increasing range of public bodies. Parliamentary orders usually avoid detailed scrutiny. Even so, it is easy to imagine growing disquiet among MPs and peers asked to agree to a growing number of extensions with privacy consequences when the underlying justification to the scheme was improved public service access. The Legislation It should be stressed that the Identity Cards Act is enabling legislation. This means that the legal framework for the anticipated scheme is in place. We will consider some of the potential pitfalls and problems the scheme may face later on. However, given that the legislation has been passed, it is appropriate to imagine that the move towards ID cards might happen in a manner as envisaged in the IDCA. History The genesis of the IDCA was a White Paper published early in 2002. Secure Borders Safe Haven announced that the Government would soon be consulting on plans to introduce an ‘entitlement card’. In July 2002 ‘Entitlement Cards and Identity Fraud’ was published. This envisaged a voluntary scheme essentially allowing the user to use the card in place of other forms of identification such as driving licences and passports and using it to allow easier access to public services. The consultation ran until January 2003. There was then little further progress throughout the year until November when findings of the consultation were published. The Home Office analysis was so positive that in fact a compulsory scheme was now proposed in the paper ‘Identity Cards: The Next Steps’. This was slightly surprising, as compulsion had been specifically ruled out during the Entitlement Card consultation. The draft ID Card Bill was published for consultation in April 2004. Responses to this consultation included a report from the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee, which was supportive of the principle but critical of the detail of the Bill 115 . The Bill itself was published in November 2004. Few changes had been made. The Bill progressed through the Commons to the Lords, where it had its second reading in March 2005. The 2005 General Election then halted the Bill’s further progress. Many commentators felt that the Bill’s progression to this point had been largely dependent on the Government’s huge Parliamentary majority. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats opposed the scheme and several Labour backbenchers were unsupportive. When the 2005 election reduced the Labour majority from 161 to 65, there were rumours that there would be no attempt to reintroduce the Bill. These were quickly scotched by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said that Identity Cards remained one of the Government’s top priorities. A new Bill was therefore introduced to the House of Commons soon after the election in May 2005. The Bill again passed through the House 115 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmhaff/130/13002.htm
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