Robin Wilton's esoterica

The game of parliamentary ping-pong is speeding up. Despite the continued objections of the House of Lords over the 'compulsion' aspects of the ID Cards Bill, the Commons voted again last night to retain the Bill in its current form: that is, the word 'voluntary' means "if a UK citizen voluntarily chooses to get or renew a passport, she or he will compulsorily be issued with an ID Card". There seem to be echoes here of the 'doctrine of dual effect'... the principle whereby doctors give lethal doses of morphine in the knowledge that it will result in the patient's death, but that doesn't count as murder, manslaughter or euthanasia 'because the purpose of administering the morphine is to relieve pain'. The Home Secretary's insistence that the linkage between passport issue and ID card registration does indeed represent a 'voluntary' ID card scheme met with vigorous criticism in the debate last night. You can find the transcript here on the Hansard site. (You will need to scroll down a couple of screens to get to the Identity Cards debate). There was a good deal of debate about the meaning of the word 'voluntary', and some interesting points about whether a passport is a 'voluntary' credential. Of course, it is in principle, but --- for example --- if I didn't have a passport I would not be able to do my job. It's not exactly a discretionary thing I happen to want to have. It's generally in the UK's economic benefit for business people to be able to travel abroad on business, and conversely, if all UK business people were to decide that they would not apply for a (voluntary) passport because it required them to accept an ID Card too, it would be to the UK's economic detriment. The point was also made that a passport is something issued so that a citizen can identify themselves to foreign countries; it's not so clear why that should compulsorily lead to being issued with something to allow your own government to identify you. The Hansard transcript is well worth a read, not just for the substance but also for some of the delightful 'parliamentary language' in there. In case you don't have the time, though, here are a couple of examples and some comment: The scorn of Conservative MP Edward Garnier for the plans is discernible even in the transcript. He described the Government's position as "intellectual dishonesty on a grand scale", and said that "Trying to extract from the Government's words any coherent intellectual basis for the case that they are now making is extremely difficult". Labour MP Mark Fisher noted that many of the claimed benefits of an ID Card (prevention of terrorism, fraud, impersonation &c) are only realised if the card is universal (and therefore compulsory).. but that the manifesto commitment was not to a comulsory, universal card. Here's Liberal Democrat MP, Simon Hughes: "Finally, there is a constitutional point that I want to make to the Home Secretary. He has come here seeking to persuade us that the House of Lords should not be followed. The Government may have a majority of Members in this place, but it has a lower share of the vote than any majority Government since 1832. It has no justification for complaining that the House at the other end of the Corridor should not do its job, and ensure that Government proposals that were not in the manifesto are stopped by the British Parliament. The House at the other end of the Corridor is the creation of this Government; it is put there by this Government; it is nominated by this Government; it is bought, in part, by this Government. The House at the other end of the Corridor is entirely a new Labour creation. The Government have a cheek to come here and tell us that, with their minimal moral and political authority, they must ask the House of Lords to reject a view that the House of Commons has passed, and insert another view. Conventionally, MPs do not speak directly of "the House of Lords"; they refer to it obliquely as "another place", or, as here "the House at the other end of the Corridor". I don't know why... Conventionally, they also do not accuse each other of lying. They sometimes come pretty close, though; here's Conservative MP and former cabinet minister John Gummer on the semantic torture to which the word 'voluntary' is being subjected: "I am surprised that [...] the Home Secretary is trying to argue what he knows will, in parliamentary language, not be accepted by most people as being close to the truth." And again: "I want simply to say to the Home Secretary that he must consider very seriously how he is going to get the British people to believe him about anything else after he has explained away the words in the Labour party manifesto to mean something that no sane person could possibly believe they meant at the time. In those circumstances, he stands condemned both as Home Secretary and as a Member of Parliament." Elsewhere in the debate, the 'Salisbury Convention' is referred to. In 1945 the Labour Party won a landslide election victory, and came to power on a manifesto commitment to introduce a welfare state on a sweeping scale. Lord Salisbury, Conservative leader of the House of Lords at the time, proposed that (given the extent of the government's mandate) the Lords should not oppose its proposed nationalisation and welfare state legislation once that legislation reached its second reading in the Upper House. As a result, there is an informal convention that, where an elected government proposes legislation which fulfils its manifesto commitments, the Lords will not oppose it on its second reading (in other words, they will fall in line with the wishes of the elected chamber). In this case, though, peers and opponents of the bill are arguing that the manifesto commitment (repeated by several of the speakers last night) was to a voluntary ID card, not one which was compulsory if you chose to do something else. Parliamentary process aside, a number of points leapt out at me concerning the proposed system. First, Stewart Hosie of the SNP (Scottish Nationalist Party) made the interesting point that Sweden has issued biometric identity cards which do not have a corresponding central register. The point being that if you have the person and the biometric credential, you have before you all the information needed to make an authentication. the central register is not required for that function to be possible. Second, and again here the Home Secretary's semantics seem to be, well, 'unconventional', Mr Clarke said that " ... there would be inconvenience to the public if the Lords amendments were passed. It does not make sense to issue a biometric passport without the accompanying identity card. The process of enrolling biometrics and checking identity for both documents will be virtually identical. The same data will be held in both cases. So let me get this straight: I apply for a passport; my biometrics are captured and stored on the passport and the National Identity Register (NIR); I am given the passport (a machine-readable credential with my biometrics on it)... and then, 'for my convenience', I am given an additional, compulsory credential with the same data. So why on earth would I want both? The Bill was voted through by a majority of 33 (out of 587 votes cast; for: 310, against: 277). It will return to the Lords on Wednesday and thence back to the Commons on Thursday of this week.

It is interesting to 'triangulate' these two stories from the BBC site yesterday: according to the first story, UK victims of terrorist attacks overseas have found that, unlike those who suffer equivalent misfortune on UK soil, they cannot claim compensation from the UK Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) or the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. Of course, insurers routinely exclude any liability for terrorist acts.

The official advice from the DWP is to sue the perpetrators. A daunting task for someone who has just been the victim of an attack and who lives in a different country from where such a law suit would have to be brought.

Home Office Minister Fiona McTaggart said: "The person who is responsible for this dreadful and criminal act is the criminal, it isn't the state in which it occurs or the British state." That seems a rather hard-hearted attitude to take, particularly if you would like to think of the UK as 'a civilised society'.

Former Home Secretary, David Blunkett, thinks it is. It is a society in which he has just won 'substantial damages' following a lawsuit (in the UK) against a Sunday paper which printed allegations about his personal life. On two other occasions, Mr Blunkett had to resign from the Cabinet after press revelations about his private life, but on this third one it was the paper which came off worst. The BBC site quotes Mr Blunkett as saying that he was happy to have his "honesty and dignity vindicated". It doesn't say whether that's the whole quotation, or whether it continued with the words "on this occasion".

The article goes on to note that Mr Blunkett has now moved out of a 'grace and favour' (i.e. rent-free) flat provided to him as a Cabinet Minister (bearing in mind that he lost that job for the second time last November); he admits that it took him some time to move out, because he had to wait for his next flat to become vacant. He is quoted as saying: "I'm very grateful to the prime minister for allowing me that breathing space and a civilised society allowing me to move out in a civilised fashion doesn't seem to me to be too much to ask."

I'm sure it doesn't. In fact, I absolutely agree.

I wonder, though what happens to other people who, under more normal circumstances, lose their job (twice) and have no way of keeping up mortgage payments - grace and favour being scarce commodities these days. Are the building societies and bailiffs 'civilised' enough to hold off for a few months, or is that 'too much to ask'?

It certainly seems 'too much to ask' of Ms McTaggart at the Home Office. She doesn't even think UK citizens injured overseas by terrorists should get the same compensation as those injured by terrorists in the UK. Not very civilised.