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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, other western democracies have a record of all the identity cards issued. If they did not have a record, one would not know who was who. Before the Committee stage, I shall try to obtain for noble Lords specific information on how other countries deal with this matter. Our national register may be expressed differently but, so far as I understand it, most other countries have a means of recording this information. They may call it something different but they each have a means of running a database. Noble Lords suggested that the register was somehow a major threat to individual privacy. I remind noble Lords that the register is concerned with identity information. It will not be a combination of existing separate databases and so it will not include medical records, financial or tax records, criminal records or driving records. We do not accept that ID cards and responsibility for the register should be at arm’s length from government. Some of my noble friends say to me, ““Go further. You should do more””, and my noble friends Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord Harris say that this is a great opportunity for us to do more. I reassure them that the Bill provides an opportunity for information to be kept on a voluntary basis. Clause 3(2) allows voluntary information to be added to an entry on request if it is in a category set out in the regulations. We do not think that other information should be compulsorily required, but there is an opportunity to include it. I am conscious of the time.