Identity Cards Bill

The more I have sat here and listened to the debate on these amendments, the more concerned I have become. The comparison was made with passports. The noble Lord said that you pay for a passport, after all, so why not for an identity card. As I understand it, in the first place the Minister can require people to be signed on to the national identity register and to have an ID card. That is compulsion, so far as I am concerned, but those people will presumably still have to pay for that card. There has been no great outcry for this Bill. People have not come forward and said desperately, ““We must have an identity card””. Indeed, until Ministers raised it, the discussion about it was pretty low-key. I am getting very concerned that people who eventually will be required compulsorily to have an identity card should not have to pay for it, because they are not asking for it. It will not be at their request. It is being imposed on them by Parliament, and it seems to me that if something is being imposed upon the people of this country, they should not be expected to pay individually for it. I am concerned that the Government have not understood what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, have been trying to get at: that there are discrepancies in parts of the Bill, and in this part of the Bill relating to charges, that ought to be remedied. However, that gives me the opportunity reiterate my belief that when something will eventually be imposed on people, they should not be made to pay for it.