Identity Cards Bill

I share the implicit views of my noble friend Lady Park that the Bill would be better called the ““National Identity Register Bill”” than the Identity Cards Bill. I apologise that I was not present in the Chamber earlier. The Home Office is bringing three Bills through your Lordships’ House, all of which are at different stages. I have spent part of the afternoon listening to the Home Secretary talk about the Terrorism Bill, and to the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Andy Hayman, in a ““standing room only”” meeting in Portcullis House, talking in a similar way about the police’s view on the issue of 90 days. So I have been gainfully employed but I have not had the privilege of hearing the precise views of the noble Lord, Lord Gould, on opinion polls. I gather that that has played a large part in the matter that we are discussing. I am speaking not as the man on the Clapham omnibus but temporarily as the famous man at a bus stop referred to in an intervention on ““Any Questions?”” many years ago. I gather that the noble Lord, Lord Gould, has prayed in aid the results of opinion polls, and I apologise that I will have to read his comments tomorrow to see precisely what he has said. My mind goes back to the occasion on ““Any Questions?”” when capital punishment was totally the vogue and the late Mr Enoch Powell, who was on the panel, was asked why he was an abolitionist when the opinion polls in the country were running at 83 per cent in favour of retention. Mr Powell said that those opinions had been gathered at places like bus stops. He added that if he happened to be in a queue at a bus stop when a man with a clipboard asked the only other person standing at that bus stop what he thought about capital punishment, and that person was one of the 83 per cent, he could guarantee that if the bus did not come along for another 15 minutes he could turn that person’s opinion round. Therefore, although I acknowledge that I do not know the precise detail of what the noble Lord, Lord Gould, said, I am hesitant to take for granted what the opinion polls say. I have to remark in passing that my Labour colleagues in the other place paid no intention at all to opinion polls on capital punishment when it was debated in the Commons.