Identity Cards Bill

I speak as one who has been implacably opposed to identity cards throughout his political life. Is not the great benefit of these proposals that if the Government insisted that they wanted to introduce the cards, they would have to go to the country with an absolutely clear proposition, given the trouble that they have got into in the past year? Meanwhile, the rest of us could go to the country with an entirely different proposition. It could become a real issue, with the public realising that there was a real choice, and—I would hope—it could provide another very good reason for the public to reject an increasingly authoritarian Government.