Identity Cards Bill

I thank the noble Baroness for giving us such an amazingly detailed response to this large list of amendments and Sir Humphrey and his assistants in drafting this amazing response, which will certainly keep us working over the Christmas Recess to work out the details of it. I was provoked by one section of the noble Baroness’s speech, in which she referred to the complaints procedure. I was perhaps provoked by my experience over the past five months with my local tax office, which, after prolonged efforts on my part, has now disclosed that it has lost all my papers. I was not greatly encouraged by the procedures she set out, which included writing to my Member of Parliament and a host of other people. Indeed, my experience as a Member of Parliament in dealing with complaints of this kind does not make me think that the procedure is quite as simple and perfect for the ordinary citizen as I think the noble Baroness was suggesting. It is not enough for the commissioner to be able to report on the general handling of complaints if specific advice is not given to citizens that they can go to the commissioner to advise that their particular complaint has been badly handled. Surely, that is the very least that we must have. It must be made clear in the legislation that a citizen need not necessarily have to go through the unbelievably long and complex set of procedures outlined by the noble Baroness before he can go to the commissioner and say, ““Look, my complaint has now taken a year or more””—that is what might well be involved—““and I think it is time that you, the commissioner, intervened to see that something is done about it””. That is one matter I will want to come back to on Report.