Identity Cards Bill

I agree with everything that has been said. The real person who will suffer from this is the person with a large mortgage and little spare cash. When you are whacked with a fine like this you will have a major problem because it costs money to appeal in court. The likelihood is that the first letter will be whacked down by the Home Office because it will have seen too many sob stories. It will just say, ““Terribly sorry; you have to pay up””. You then have to take the matter to court. How will you afford a lawyer? If you have a nice house you will not get legal aid, so where will the money come from? It is a delicate balancing act as to whether you can afford to take the case to court. Most people end up being frightened, particularly if they are trying to run a business of their own or something like that. They will not have the time to spend on doing this. I have seen something like this happen with the congestion charge. If the scheme is outsourced to a private company, which it probably will be, it is even more likely to be abused because revenue will be dependent upon the amount of money raised. The company will have an interest in ensuring that the maximum is got back from it. I will not bore the Committee tonight with the details relating to the congestion charge of sending things to one address, lifting a car from another address and then not notifying you so even the police do not know that it is in the pound. There are horror stories out there about the way that these companies behave or the bureaucracy behaves, so it is the essential to have this word ““intentional”” included and change the burden of proof back to the way that we have always had in Britain in our common law society where the burden of proof is on the prosecutor; the state.