Identity Cards Bill

I very much share the curiosity of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, who has moved the amendment. I hope the Minister will satisfy us. Paragraph 9(c) is couched in extremely wide terms. It states,"““other particulars, in relation to each such occasion, of the provision of the information””." Is it not possible to be a little more exact than this? Or is it, as I suspect, yet another instance of what I would call the quartermaster mentality of the Home Office and the noble Baroness’s advisers—““You never know when we might want some other form of information, so let us put in a general sweeper, a kind of Hoover which will suck in every possibility which might confront us””? The other point made by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, which very much concerns me, is the duty we owe to our fellow citizens. One does not have to look at many newspapers, nor look very far back, to find examples of laws which have passed through your Lordships’ House and the other place which have then been attended by the most extraordinary unintended consequences. I do not wish to take up the time of the Committee, but the perfectly nice and very harmless lady who made a speech the other day in front of the Cenotaph about British casualties in Iraq was treated in the most extraordinary fashion. She was taken away by a large escort, when I am quite sure that no Minister had possibly foreseen such a thing happening under that Act of Parliament. At the same time, the gentleman who regularly makes such a nasty mess all over Parliament Square, against whom legislation was aimed, is still there. There is a muddle here. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is absolutely right. I worry about the belief that we might need these powers so we had better have them. There is no thought in the minds of Ministers at the time about what some red-tape-minded, inquisitive official might make use of. People do not examine passports too carefully in this country, but I have often been asked the most footling questions about details in my passport when I have been abroad. The added requirement that the Bill will put on everybody to inform officials in any country of intimate and numerous details will afford inquisitive officials a marvellous opportunity to bully people and waste their time. I hope that Ministers will bear that in mind, because I am not at all satisfied.