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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, we made it absolutely clear—we should not by any means misdirect ourselves—that we would reintroduce the Bill that had been before the House before the election. That is exactly what we did. These provisions were in the previous Bill. No one in this House should allow themselves to be misled in this regard. The noble Baroness is suggesting that we are playing at semantics on what ““initially”” meant. We made it clear that the voluntary nature of the scheme would be that we would roll out this procedure in accordance with passports as people came to apply for them—that that would be the initial stage. Then a second stage, with compulsion so that everyone had to have an ID card, would come about. We also made it clear that it was important to have that debate in principle.