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Identity Cards Bill

The Minister’s remarks have worried me. She uses too often the words ““integrity”” and ““clarity””, both of which are absent in this Bill, for reasons that we have already gone into at very great length—because of the amount of money involved and the technology, which is still developing. Those are two very good reasons for postponing these proposals until they become clearer. The Minister said that she had heard that she had a reputation for clarity, and that she valued it; and she is entitled to say that. She has done her best today, in very difficult circumstances, to sustain her reputation for clarity; but the difficulties that she is up against are not of her making. I do not want to make a long speech, but this whole thing bothers me, because nothing erases the suspicion in my mind that the present Government do not take as seriously as I do the issues of personal freedom. The dangers of intolerable intrusion as a result of this Bill are very much in my mind—and I hope that they will be in the Minister’s.