Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I was hoping to get into my amendment, but I will answer the noble Lord’s point. There is a huge difference in terms of severity. The noble Lord shakes his head—I shall leave it at that and continue with my speech. By far the major part of the Home Secretary’s opening and closing speeches were devoted to trying to re-interpret the Labour Party manifesto at the election last year. At col. 1249 he quoted from the manifesto—and these words have been repeated several times:"““‘We will introduce ID cards, including biometric data like fingerprints, backed up by a national register and rolling out initially on a voluntary basis as people renew their passports’””." Having repeated that, Mr Clarke continued:"““Passports are voluntary documents—[Laughter.]””—" that was not me, but Hansard—"““Well, of course they are.””," said Mr Clarke."““No one is forced to renew a passport if they choose not to do so””.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/06; col. 1249.]" I am afraid that my primary school teacher, Miss Lovelace, would have give Mr Clarke 0 out of 10 for that. She would have pointed out in the sweetest way, because she was never nasty to a wayward child, that the word ““voluntary”” in that sentence related to ID cards, not passports. It plainly did not say or mean to say, ““We will introduce ID cards initially on a compulsory basis as people renew their passports voluntarily””. Indeed, more than 80 per cent of the population have passports. Yet that is the cock-eyed interpretation that is now pressed on the public by a government who seem to be losing their sense of shame. Only an administration that desperately needs to dis-impale itself from the hook of its own making would resort to such double-speak. If this was a City prospectus, the financial equivalent of an election manifesto, the FSA would be down on it like a ton of bricks. The Square Mile may not be a beacon of moral scrupulousness, but it would scoff at the verbal gymnastics being employed by the Government. Noble Lords should listen to the Home Secretary again. In the same speech, he stated:"““That position is that the scheme will initially be based on a stand-alone identity card, issued on its own on a voluntary basis, or together with a document such as a passport, which is also issued on a voluntary basis. That seems to be clear and unequivocal””.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/06; col. 1249.]" Conceivably, Mr Clarke, that is so, but only so long as you do not link the two, as the designation process under Clauses 4 and 5 does, and only so long as the designation process does not, in making that link, force the citizen seeking or renewing a passport to take out an ID card as well. But that is precisely what it does. It staggers me that we are still discussing that point. Try that argument out on anyone in the high street or in a pub and you will get an ““are you mad?”” look. The inglorious reality is that the reason the Labour manifesto last year talked only of ““voluntary”” ID cards, was to disarm the opposition that was already apparent from civil liberties lobbies, among whom there are many Labour voters and for whom the issue of compulsion was important, if not vital. When Mr Clarke wound up on Monday, he stepped yet deeper into his own verbal bog, arguing that what really matters is not the manifesto at all, but what was said before the manifesto—namely what was in the Bill published in 2004. Indeed, the noble Baroness gave us a long peroration today of what happened before the manifesto. But that, too, is patently feeble. We all know full well that what matters for the purposes of the manifesto mandate—and the Salisbury convention—is what is in the manifesto. You cannot at one and the same time sanctify manifestos by claiming, as the Commons regularly does, the right to override this place on the basis of commitments in them—most recently on the Hunting Bill—and, at the same time, ignore a particular commitment on the grounds that you do not much like it and have had second thoughts. We know full well that manifestos sometimes very intentionally change old policies and priorities and adopt new ones to attract wider public support at elections. If, besides scanning the 111 pages of Labour’s last manifesto, the public are also supposed to have reviewed what Labour Ministers said and what Bills were before this House and the other place in the previous year or two, the situation would be as daft as it would be unrealistic. What would the poor voter be supposed to make—