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Identity Cards Bill

I am grateful for that intervention, and I will answer the hon. Gentleman by saying that it was my experience that this quasi-identity card—which was issued first in the mid-1970s, I think—had a converse effect to that which the Government sought. As he will remember, anybody who had such a card or driving licence on their person had a pass, which, if shown to police or soldiers, gave them free passage. So, it had precisely the opposite effect to that which was intended. If the cards had worked in Ulster, why was their further use not developed? Why was biometric information not added to those cards when that experiment was tried? Empirically, the experiment failed to control terrorism, and I believe that it will do so again. From the mouths of Ministers, including the Home Secretary, it is acknowledged that identity cards would not have affected how ““clean skins”” operate inside this country.