Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)

My Lords, I am pleased that my noble friend Lord Lucas managed to make it, because I found him extremely persuasive and I agree with what he said. I shall return to the issue that his second amendment dealt with—namely, the issue of sex. I thank the organisation Sex Matters for its briefing on Amendments 34 and 48. I am not sure why there are no explanatory notes to these but I referred to the point in my speech at Second Reading, and I hope I will be able to explain it adequately now. The core aim of the digital verification system that we are legislating for is to enable people to prove who they are and to provide information about themselves. The reason this system of digital identity can be trusted with our data, our safety and our personal and economic lives is that the information it contains comes from authoritative sources. It draws on information in my passport or my driving licence, which itself comes from information on my birth certificate, which itself is a certified copy of the entry on the birth register, which before that came from the information recorded at the hospital where I was born. Actually, I was born at home; nevertheless, the issue remains true. However, if the chain of integrity of data is broken, the system of digital verification is no longer trustworthy. The Bill contains provision to secure the reliability of digital verification services by means of a carefully constructed framework, a register of providers, an information gateway and a trust mark, but there is a flaw, which my noble friend has referred to, and it has been pointed out by the human rights charity Sex Matters. The digital verification system that has recently been published in its gamma edition, after several years of development, assumes that government sources are reliable and accurate, but, when it comes to the attribute of sex—whether someone is male or female—we know that those records are not accurate or reliable.