Identity Cards Bill

I am grateful for that late intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, because I have been tussling with the same difficulty in relation to paragraphs (b) and (c). Paragraph (b) has to catch paragraph (c) as well because you cannot be issued with an identity card unless you are on the national identity register, which is being administered. So one administration covers the other. I certainly tabled this as a probing amendment, and it remains just that. I was hoping to go forwards but, with some of the questions eliciting unexpected replies, I think that I am going backwards again. However, I appreciate the courtesy of the Minister. I understand exactly what he said on Amendment No. 68. I shall not return to that amendment. I accept that he says it could be reasonable to enter something but that it would be impracticable to do so. When he gave that answer, I also found it alarming that the Government were worried about huge amounts of information being added, whereas that is in any event what they are predicating by the whole system. As for the picture of people hating the system so much that they want to make it collapse by entering huge amounts of information, I suspect that some people may want to make it collapse not because they hate the system but because they want to manipulate it. That will take us back to some of the problems that we have in relation to security. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his great courtesy to my noble friend Lord Peyton of Yeovil, and I await with interest his response to the noble Lord’s answer. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 67A and 68 not moved.]