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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, a question occurred to me during the earlier speeches. One document to which this is intended to apply is a passport. A passport used to be a document that, in loud and ringing terms, if the Government were kind enough to give you one, commanded other governments to assist your travel and let you go freely around their country. It is now a document that you must have before you are allowed to travel at all. Instead of being a privilege given by the government, it is now compulsory. Apparently, now, if I want that document, without which I cannot travel—to exercise the freedom to which I am entitled of travelling to anywhere in the world—not only do I have to apply and pay for it, as I have always had to, I must allow my particulars, to be entered on a different register and pay extra to get an identity card. Is it compatible with the freedom of the individual and the Human Rights Act that one shall be debarred from exercising the freedom to move about the world unless one ““chooses”” to go on some other government register and to pay them an extra fee for that privilege? Surely that provision is bound to be struck down as contrary to human rights.