Identity Cards Bill

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for giving way. She makes a good point about a civil penalty as opposed to a criminal penalty. It is really a question of the procedural safeguards when you get to court. The burden of proof should be on the Crown or the equivalent—the Home Office—rather than on the citizen. The other rules that normally apply in the criminal court should apply. After all, that is the way that the European Court of Human Rights approaches Article 6 in this respect. It is not that it minds so much exactly what things are called; it is concerned with the substance of the protections. The amendments that are before us now focus on the substance of the protections and I hope that the noble Baroness will be sympathetic to that. They would do the Home Secretary no harm and they would seriously relieve citizens of potential injustice.