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Identity Cards Bill

I wish the Government would not use the word ““customers””. The people who are involved in being registered, and who have to carry identification cards—forcibly, after a number of years—cannot be described as customers at all. They are citizens. Those citizens may well have a grievance. The Minister says, ““If you’ve got a grievance, you can complain to the people you’ve got the grievance with””. Perhaps that is the sensible thing to do first of all, but surely you need a person who will take up the individual case; someone who is independent of the organisation about which you are complaining. We had this argument recently over the Children’s Commissioner, because in Wales they sensibly set up a commissioner who can receive individual complaints and deal with individual cases. In England there are too many people, and it would be too expensive. If the Government are going to impose upon everyone this loss of freedom, as it undoubtedly is, surely they can afford to put in an independent complaints system, where a citizen—not a ““customer””—who has a grievance can take that forward and hope for some redress from an independent person.