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Identity Cards Bill

However, I feel that House’s appetite for it may be less great than that of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. If the House is content, I will write to the noble Earl in specific detail, but the import of my response to each of his amendments is that I understand his concern; he is right to raise the issue of technical improvements, particularly encryption; and he is right to emphasise that the use of encryption in the system may become increasingly important if we are to keep this database secure and make sure that it is impregnable. We believe that the framework that this Bill provides enables us to do that without some of the problems that he envisaged. I will deal in a letter with the technical meat of what I have just said, which I shall give to the noble Earl and share with all of those who feel a similar level of excitement about those details.