Identity Cards Bill

I hope that we never have another Great War in which we lose 50,000 men in one day, which was the position faced by the Liberal government and the Coalition government under Asquith and later Lloyd-George. Those were rather different circumstances from those we face here. In my opening remarks I said that I hoped to be constructive and amiable in my approach. I am always grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for his amiability when replying to our debates. He reminds me of an adjudicator at a national Eisteddfod who awards the points at the end of the competition. However, it should be remembered that the minimum points awarded are always 90 out of 100. It is those awarded 95 or 96 points who win. I noted with interest that he replaced government by opinion poll as advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Gould, with government by taxi driver. From his accent, I detected that it was a London taxi driver. I do not object to that so long as I can have devolution in Wales. We can then have government by Welsh taxi driver in the Principality.