IDENTITY CARDS

THE IDENTITY CARD BILL

Briefing for Committee Stage

The Identity Card Bill provides that any person over the age of 16 will be required to hold an ID card, with scope at clause 41(5) for the Home Secretary to order a lower registration age. The inclusion of young people in the legislation, and the potential for later inclusion of younger children, raises a very specific set of issues.

Cost:

Although the liability for any costs incurred in registration or subsequent amendment of recordable information falls upon the individual to whom the entry on the register relates, it is difficult to see how young people could meet such financial demands.

Of the 2 million people aged 16-18 in the UK, around 10% are not in education employment or training[i] and they are eligible for income support only in exceptional circumstances. They therefore have no income.

Young people under 18 can normally claim income support only where they are unable to live with parents, either because they are leaving care, are unaccompanied asylum-seekers or are homeless following the irretrievable breakdown of the relationship with their parents. The maximum rate of benefit payable is £44.50 as opposed to £56.20 for adults[ii]. Research by the homelessness charity Centrepoint in 2002 found that young people on benefits were living at subsistence level and that: “several young people described being so hungry at night that they were unable to sleep”.[iii]

While an estimated 60% of 16-18s are in employment of some kind, this is chiefly part-time, unskilled work paid at the minimum wage of £3 per hour. The majority of people in this age group are also in full-time education and are likely to live in families where the household income is low. The adult minimum wage of £5.05 does not apply to under-21s, and there is no minimum wage for those serving apprenticeships.[iv]

The full Educational Maintenance Allowance of £30 per week is only payable to young people in full-time education where the annual family income is below £20,000.[v]

Given these low - or non-existent - income levels, it is inevitable that parents would have to bear the costs associated with their children’s ID cards. In the event that a parent could not, or would not, do so, it is the young person who would be liable for any payments or financial penalties.   The young person who cannot afford to register risks entering a downward spiral of debt and distress as the penalties mount; up to £2,500 each time they fail to register as directed.  In enforcement proceedings, liability could not be challenged, nor could reasons for failure to register be taken into account.

Notification of changes of address:

The burden of notification will have a disproportionate impact upon young people living away from home, who are less likely than adults to have a settled address, and it would be particularly onerous for those who are homeless, whose accommodation in hostels and night-shelters can change on a nightly basis.

This unsettled existence also increases the possibility of a young person falling foul of notification requirements because of the frequency with which they would have to alter their details, and the likelihood that mail would not be forwarded to them. The exigencies of such a lifestyle are not in any case conducive to personal organisation and it is highly likely that a teenager would find difficulty in coping with the demands of constant notification, and again would risk escalating penalties.

Some homeless young people are acutely vulnerable: Centrepoint, for example, estimates that over a quarter of young people using its services have a mental health or substance abuse problem. In addition, many have literacy problems[vi], which are likely to present a significant obstacle to registration, or in accessing  the objection and appeal systems.

Confidentiality of address:

It is essential for some young people that they - and their families - cannot be traced. This is particularly true of those who have been adopted, especially following abuse by their natural parents, or in cases where a parent has been barred from contact with a child following domestic violence or sexual abuse.

During consideration of government plans to construct a universal database of children under powers contained in the Children Act 2004, the Women's Aid Federation commented:  “While electronic records present the possibility of an unbreakable audit trail, it should be noted that this is not likely to be much comfort to a mother or child who has been tracked down by a domestic violence perpetrator due to misuse of the database.” [vii]

Those same concerns apply equally to the Identity Card Bill. The lengths to which some abusers will go in order to find their family’s whereabouts are well-documented, and the potential risks posed by corrupt disclosure cannot be overstated.

Chronology of addresses:

The list of addresses held on the database will form a permanent record of any care placements, making it impossible for an adult to hold as confidential the fact of having been looked-after. Similar problems will beset any person who has served a sentence during childhood in a Secure Training Centre or Young Offender’s Institution, undermining the rehabilitative emphasis of youth justice. This problem can only be exacerbated should the Home Secretary at a future date order that ID Cards be issued to younger children.

Information currently held about children:

Since 2000, a series of databases has been created to hold and share a breathtaking array of information and opinion about children and young people, including education, health, social care, offending behaviour or the likelihood of becoming an offender, and also the results of highly personal psychological assessments. Plans are in progress to build the various systems into a complex network under the umbrella of the Integrated Children’s System.

Section 12 of The Children Act 2004 provides for the government to order the construction of another, universal database containing the name and basic details of every child in England and Wales. This same section also requires agencies and government departments to share information that they hold about each child without the consent of child or parent; regulations to bring this section into effect are expected to be laid before Parliament during the current session.

It is intended that a single identifying number will form the point of entry into the children’s database network and there are strong indications that this could be the National Insurance Number[viii], which is contained in the list of recordable information at para 4(1), Schedule 1 of the Identity Card Bill.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights in their report on the powers now contained in the Children Act 2004 has reported that the plans for the sharing of children’s information will have the result that “there is no meaningful content left to a child's Article 8 right to privacy and confidentiality in their personal information”.[ix]

We are extremely concerned at any possible linkage between the identity card database and the highly sensitive data on every aspect of children’s lives contained within the network of children’s databases.

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