Identity Cards Bill

We’ll come back to that in a minute. I am getting heckled by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), and I shall give way to him in a moment, when he will learn about heckling. I am sure that I will be treated very sympathetically by the German immigration service. When I am eventually let out of prison and I return to Britain, I am sure that I shall have no trouble getting back in without a passport. It is, of course, ridiculous to assert that passports are voluntary. Perhaps what the Home Secretary means is that foreign travel is voluntary, which is what the Under-Secretary said from a sedentary position. I think that that is what the Government are trying to say. I suppose that we can also put to one side the disgraceful idea that British citizens, of all people, can leave their own country only if they agree to let the Government intrude on their privacy, on a scale unprecedented in British history. However, does he really believe that foreign travel is voluntary for business men whose customers are all abroad? Does he think that travel is voluntary for people whose parents or children live abroad, as is increasingly the case today? Does he think that foreign travel is voluntary for people whose children get in trouble abroad—something that we have read about too often in the past few months and years? [Interruption.] Does the Under-Secretary of State want to intervene? If so, I shall give way.