Identity Cards Bill

The debate and the disagreement between the other place and our House turn on whether the scheme is compulsory or voluntary. The Home Secretary is right to remind us that we should need primary legislation if the scheme were to be completely compulsory, but the Bill establishes, by the back door, a halfway house to compulsion. Why? I suspect that the real reason is that the Home Secretary is not confident. When we eventually reach the stage of introducing primary legislation to make the scheme compulsory, he wants to be able to tell the House and the public, ““Sixty per cent. of people in the UK already have an ID card. What are you worried about?”” However, the only reason that 60 per cent. of people will have a card will be as a result of this back-door way of compelling them to have a card if they want a passport or a driving licence. It is perfectly respectable for the Home Secretary to want a universal card, but as the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said, the proposed scheme will not be effective; the card certainly will not achieve any of the things that the Government hope for it against terrorism, international fraud and so on, unless it is universal. The idea that it could be semi-universal actually denies the whole purpose of an ID card, certainly in terms of its practical effectiveness. It is not unreasonable for the Home Secretary to want a universal card, but he does not want to legislate for it now because he knows that he would not get the measure through—[Interruption.] No, he is not legislating for a compulsory card. If he did that now, he knows that the Government would have to pay the full costs for such a card. He could not compel people to have a card and to pay £90 for it. He knows that a compulsory card would have to be financed by the Government and the Chancellor does not want to do that, so we have this rather dishonest and disingenuous halfway scheme. If the Government and the Home Secretary were really confident about the proposed card, they would trust the British people. If the Home Secretary feels that he can make an overwhelming case for the importance of an identity card—as he undoubtedly does; I think that he is entirely sincere—he should trust his judgment and make that case to the British people. He should say, ““Believe me, we will benefit from the card so volunteer for it””, but he cannot introduce the scheme by compulsion. In proceeding by compulsion, he does not trust the British people. He certainly does not trust the people when he proposes this semi, rather false voluntary scheme, which is in effect compulsory.