Identity Cards Bill

I hope that I can begin on an uncontroversial note in a debate on what has been a controversial Bill, and that is that the House must surely wish Lord Phillips of Sudbury the most speedy recovery from what I hope is a temporary illness. The arguments for the Bill, as the Home Secretary said, stand in their own terms. It seems that the arguments in favour of the Bill stand in an interesting substance, but I am not sure that its own terms recommend it. The Home Secretary would like us to believe that there is a huge constitutional wrangle between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, over which House of this Parliament should have supremacy—us, the elected House, or the other House as the unelected and largely appointed House. I say in parenthesis that a large proportion of its Members have been appointed by the present Prime Minister. I would describe the dispute that we have in other terms: that it is a dispute between the citizen and the state. It is a dispute between truth and freedom of the individual and the power of the Executive. I would describe it—