Identity Cards Bill

The real point of the amendment is that it deals with function creep. In 1950, a parliamentary committee looked at the use of the existing identity card and discovered that the original three purposes—conscription, rationing and national security—had mushroomed into 39 different functions. We can safely assume that, whatever the Government’s intentions at present, the scope of the Bill is likely to widen rather than to decrease. Indeed, it is clearly the intention to make identity cards compulsory at some stage. A great many of the speeches in support of the Bill were made on the assumption that powers that, we were told tonight, do not exist at present will be added later. The speech made in the House at Second Reading by a former commissioner, which assumed that the police would be able to stop people and ask for their identity card rather than asking for their names and having the embarrassment of dealing with them, was clearly based on the assumption that at some stage people would be compelled to carry identity cards. Therefore, as such extensions are almost inevitable, it is essential that we should state at the very beginning that no extension of powers should be made without full parliamentary approval. No doubt at various stages of the Bill we shall be told that the affirmative resolution procedure applies and that the Government will have to seek the approval of Parliament. However, we all know the limitations of the affirmative resolution procedure—its inability to amend provisions and to allow the full debate that will be needed on some of the major changes. It is important that the principle of parliamentary approval for such fundamental issues should be clearly written into the Bill right at the beginning. I find it hard to believe that a Government who believe in parliamentary democracy should have difficulty in accepting the principle that Parliament should be supreme in this matter, and that they would deny us the right to include such a measure in the Bill.