Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, when this matter was last before the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland, said to us that there was a straight conflict between this House and the other place; that there was no possibility of a compromise; and, therefore, that this House must bow. I was impressed by that argument and I agreed with her that there was no possibility of a compromise. On that basis, I and, I believe, a number of others on these Benches abstained. We could not bring ourselves to vote for compulsory ID cards under the guise of pseudo-voluntarism, but we took the Minister’s point about conflict. We now have before us an apparent reasonable compromise. If people think it is not really a compromise at all but merely a smokescreen put up by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, with his customary skill, to make the same point as before, then the Minister was right. But if it is in fact a reasonable compromise, then the point that the Minister made last time goes, and it is wholly right that this compromise should go back to the other place for them to think again. The only real reason the Minister gave why this was not a practical compromise, albeit a compromise that the Government do not like—the Government would always rather have their own way than compromise; everyone would—was that it was likely to cost somewhat more. I am perfectly happy to see, when one goes out with one’s passport application, a sign that says, ““You can now have your identity card, and if you do it all in this one moment, the fee will be so-and-so. If, on the other hand, you don’t do them both together and you have to apply for an identity card in the future, either because you need one or because it is compulsory, the fee for that will be x. The fee for the present passport application is y, and x and y will add up to more than the joint fee you are now going to pay””. So there is economic pressure on someone to decide to go the cheaper way. Although I do not terribly like identity cards, I do not feel strongly enough about them to worry about £25, or however much it may be. Surely it is not an adequate reason for saying that this is not a compromise to which serious consideration should be given merely to say that it will cost somewhat more—no one knows how much—and that people should not be given the choice of paying that much more rather than being driven to identity cards by compulsion under the thin guise of voluntarism.