Identity Cards Bill

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his rapid introduction because I think that we went over a lot of this in earlier amendments. The noble Lord is right. We could not possibly agree to a bargaining game in your Lordships’ Chamber in the way that the amendment invites us to do. I simply invite the noble Lord to consider that any major reduction in the penalties of the order suggested would hardly be said to be a deterrent. In any event, it will be for the court to consider. The amounts will be imposed on a case-by-case basis having regard to the circumstances, and those will obviously be some of the matters that were raised in our earlier debate. My noble friend Lady Scotland referred to paragraph 16, and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, raised the issue of the degree of compliance. He is right that at the first instance one would not expect the upper end of the penalty to be imposed, but if there were a failure to conform on subsequent occasions of course one would expect the penalties to increase, and that is exactly what the draft code of practice says at paragraph 6.15. The end of that paragraph states:"““If the contravention is particularly serious or there is a history of previous contraventions, the penalty may be increased accordingly””." That is how we intent it to work. We would not initially expect the penalty to be imposed at the top end. We cannot see that reducing the penalties would in any way be a form of deterrent. We rely on the deterrent because it is an important part of the package. People need to understand that contravention is serious. I understand why the noble Lord has moved the amendment, but we cannot agree to it. He understands that and we think that we have the maximum penalties about right. The code of practice is important in terms of interpretation and I would expect it to work well in those circumstances. Given the code of practice, the noble Lord should feel able to withdraw the amendment.