Identity Cards Bill

I will not do so, save to say that I wholly disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The Home Secretary said that the argument was all about designation, and that we had exhausted that debate, bringing matters to a necessary conclusion. I hesitate to say that he has done so deliberately, but he has confused a debate about designated documents per se with one about compulsion by stealth. The kernel of the debate, which he does not want to address, is whether it is appropriate for the Government to stand at the general election on a manifesto that says one thing, then to seek to railroad a measure through the House—and, by threats and others means, to do so in the other place, too—thus avoiding the central issue of compulsion by stealth. The Government accept that there should be express compulsion by primary legislation for the 20 per cent. of the public who do not hold a passport, but they find it extremely difficult to get their heads around the fact—and it is only logical that they should do so if there is to be any consistency in the application of their thinking—that there should be a plain and clear statement of their intention to introduce compulsion through designated documents either by a voluntary arrangement, which they advocated at the general election, or by another piece of primary legislation. Of course, they do not have the intellectual or the political courage, let alone the self-confidence, to advance that argument, because they know that it would not attract public support, still less support from anyone else. The Home Secretary’s final and most desperate throw was to rely on the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who had supported identity cards. Again, that allows the Government to fall into a trap of their own making. They would like us to forget that the Bill is not primarily about identity cards but about the national identity register. If they were intellectually honest and confident about their policy they would have called the Identity Cards Bill the national identity register Bill. People would therefore understand that they wish to compel them, either through primary legislation, which we have yet to see, for the 20 per cent., or by stealth via designated documents, to supply information to a vast Government computer, which will be a huge bucket into which other Government agencies and, indeed, private companies can dip. We cannot audit the register’s activities and trawls, as that is prohibited by the Bill. It therefore does the Home Secretary little credit to seek to rely on my right hon. and learned Friend. When the current Prime Minister was Leader of the Opposition shortly before the 1997 election—we remember that, but perhaps the Home Secretary does not—he clearly opposed identity cards, which he thought were a waste of money and an invasion of civil liberties. He did not think that the Labour party could possibly countenance them under his leadership. I cannot imagine what has happened to him since, but as public confidence in what the Labour party says and does is at an all-time low, it behoves the Government, having been elected on a manifesto, to adhere to their promises.