---

Identity Cards Bill

There is very little that I need add to my hon. Friend’s intervention, other than to say that he makes a good point about function creep. That becomes possible because the purposes are so widely drawn. Government amendment No. 2 is unexceptionable. However, given the catalogue of examination that the Minister of State outlined earlier in response to the motion in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), it is remarkable that the Government should still feel it necessary to table their own amendments. The Minister of State was pressed in Committee on clause 7, which is the mechanism by which identity cards may be made compulsory. I read press reports during the summer months which suggested that the Minister had accepted during a Home Office seminar that the so-called super-affirmative procedure was defective and unworkable. Is that the case? If so, why have the Government not tabled amendments to rectify the defects today?