Identity Documents Bill

Yes, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. We heard from another of my hon. Friends about how a constituent of his working in the port at Dover was already feeling under pressure to acquire one of these identification cards. There is every reason to believe that that attitude would have become extremely damaging in the longer term. Criminals, however, would have ignored all of this. The card's security measures are not impregnable either. In recent years, I have prosecuted a number of criminal cases in the Crown courts in England involving the fraudulent misuse of identification documents, usually passports. Passports are now quite sophisticated documents, but even all the sophisticated apparatus designed to protect their integrity can be circumvented without particularly highly specialist care. That is because it is often the naked eye that is used to determine the veracity or otherwise of a document. Many court cases have resulted from such situations. There is no substance to the Labour argument. We have now a kind of Big Brother watch in this country, and Labour's attitude that one is guilty until proven innocent has paid into the lack of security and lack of integrity in our system. I pointed out to the shadow Home Secretary, when he was in his place, that in a press release on 27 May, the head of the TUC backed the coalition Government's proposals. Brendan Barber said that"““identity cards were a costly folly…and would have been an unwelcome intrusion into people's personal liberty…Scrapping identity cards is an important sign that the new Government is committed to safeguarding civil liberties.””" When the shadow Home Secretary first became Home Secretary, he announced that ID cards would no longer be compulsory, which gave the distinct impression that he had not been much in favour of them in the first place. I am delighted to support this Bill as the first measure that Her Majesty's Government are bringing before the House. The compulsion by stealth was a feature that would have been completely deleterious to the interests of the people of this country. The cost was another factor altogether. Some £800 million will be saved over the next 10 years by abandoning this absurd and costly scheme. It is interesting to note that Labour Members are not taking a stance against the Bill. Perhaps that is because they understand that the cost-benefit analysis has not worked out. There is no substance to the Labour argument, and there never was. I am delighted to support this measure.