Identity Cards Bill

My hon. Friend is exactly right. The Government want us to face an argument of inevitability. They will say, ““We have got a huge sunk cost. The vast majority of the population is on the system already—why not make it everybody?”” That will seem eminently practical and sensible, but the benefits will not have accrued, because, as Ministers know, if the ID cards system is going to do many of the things that the Government claim, it must be compulsory—carrying an ID card will probably have to be compulsory, too, but we can address that point in five years’ time. Passports will ensure that some 80 per cent. of the population is on the register in a decade. I was mildly surprised by the Home Secretary’s remarks about driving licences, because the Government tried to take the power to recall all driving licences in the Road Safety Bill. The Home Secretary has said that that was not to allow further designation for ID cards, and I must believe him, but the Lords did not believe him, and they blocked the measure. That is not an issue now, although it might have been, but it is another reason not to allow the Government the right to enforce this creeping compulsion. There is a final, serious matter of principle. The way in which the Government have gone about trying to deliver this Bill is of a piece with what they have done to other hard-won rights of the British people. The ID card will make no difference to serious security issues for at least a decade, if ever, and the difference may not be positive, too. Before then, this House will make a serious and considered decision about compulsion. Let us not allow ourselves to discover at that point that we have inadvertently already made that decision. Let us not discover too late that we have sleepwalked into the surveillance state. Let us protect the British citizen’s right to choose, and this House’s eventual right to decide. Let us reject the Government amendment this afternoon.