Identity Cards Bill

This is an important opportunity to look once again at the Government’s proposals and to consider the changes incorporated by the Lords. I welcome the steps that the Government have taken recently to secure the substance of their programme. Inevitably, questions about personal privacy, civil liberties, system security, cross-predictability and function creep must be taken into account in the development of an identity verification system, but by removing compulsion in relation to entry on the national identity register and in dealing with designated documents—the substance of the amendments—the Lords would make the system less secure and its use in public services less effective. In fact, the measures address none of the substantive issues with which Parliament might properly be concerned, and can be considered only as spoiling tactics designed to make the implementation of ID cards impossible in practice. If those are the Opposition’s tactics—that is by no means clear from what the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) has said today—they are not in the interests of the British people, do not reflect the world in which we live and, frankly, constitute opposition for opposition’s sake. The churlish contribution from the hon. and learned Member for Harborough— It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings, Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Order [this day], put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.