Identity Documents Bill

The hon. Gentleman has ingeniously asked the same question as his right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, to which I shall therefore give exactly the same answer, or revert to an old parliamentary phrase and refer him to the answer I gave some moments ago. We are in contact with the Information Commissioner's Office about the destruction process, as I have said, precisely to ensure transparency and openness about the physical destruction process. The Chairman of the Committee made the point that I had jokingly suggested that we might have a sort of auto-da-fé of all that unnecessary information. I was only half joking when I said that and, sadly, it is not possible because the information is on various databases, so we are going to have to delete it. To answer the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak's technical question, that is like any other act of removing information and involves deleting it from the various databases. That is why we are doing it in conjunction with the Information Commissioner. The hon. Gentleman is waving the Bill it me, so I will say that it must be done within two months of Royal Assent. The reason why I cannot give the exact answer that the Chairman of the Committee wants is simply that I do not know when Royal Assent will be, but I hope that it is soon. We will then do it as soon as possible within the two months set out in the Bill. I hope that reassures the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. There is a serious point here: if one believes, as we on the Government side do, that this information has been held unnecessarily, it is sensible to get rid of it as soon as possible, and Parliament needs to know about that.