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Identity Cards Bill

I am grateful to the noble Earl for making the point. In summary, perhaps to deal with the previous point put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Neill, no system that has been applied in the way we intend to apply the national identity card scheme with its security processes has failed in the manner being suggested. That is why we are confident that we can develop a robust national identity register and a safe ID card. We have had a useful debate and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for giving us the benefit of his history lesson and trail through time, telling us that it was in good measure a Liberal government who were responsible for introducing the first national identity card. We can only hope that the Liberal Democrats will return to that position at some point in the future. We shall live with that faint hope in our hearts. Our debate has covered considerable ground and we can now move on to look at more of the important detail.