Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble Lord, when he was writing manifestos, put that in. Maybe he did—but he lost on many of the manifestos that he wrote. It is not the point—of course, the House of Lords has the right to say no; I do not dispute that at all. The only question is how often it should be allowed to say no. I thought that my noble friend Lord Peston made an excellent point. For any party that wants to be in government to know that in this place it will never have a majority, however much this place is changed, and that it will always have to use the Parliament Act when it is defeated, umpteen times, is to turn this place into a nonsense. Of course, we have the right to say no. I welcome that—indeed, I voted on one occasion on this Bill to ask the other place to rethink. But the other place has ““rethunk””, to coin a phrase—it rethunk and voted twice. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, wants the other place to do it again; he is nodding his head. But why? How many times does he want the other place to do that? The thing is absurd. I am not concerned here with the manifesto or the Salisbury convention. The only people who seem to read our manifesto are the people on the opposition Benches. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, who said—and I hope that I am quoting her correctly—that the public rely on it. Perhaps my noble friend Lord Gould believes that as well. But the idea that 60 million people read the manifesto, although I wish it were true—