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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I am glad that the noble Viscount has put into place the extraordinary argument advanced by the Minister in our previous debate about what constitutes a voluntary scheme. I thought that to describe the scheme as voluntary simply because there was no obligation for you to apply for a passport, and that you could exclude yourself from the pleasure of going abroad, was a pretty thin argument; but it has been made even thinner by the noble Viscount. I am also glad that the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, made the point about the previous record of the Passport Office. Yes, it has done quite well recently but initially it made an absolute shambles of things. So I am not sure that I am filled with quite the degree of confidence that I was supposed to be on being told by the ministerial Bench that it was not going to be like the firearms scheme where the Government had to rely on the Home Office incompetence but that they were handing it over to someone else who might do the job better. It says something about the confidence of Ministers now in the Home Office of their ability to run a scheme that they advance such an argument. There are two phases of this great project. First, there is what might be called the ““You all love it, you all want it, you will all want to have these identity cards and therefore we shall go along with it and we are giving you a great privilege”” phase. Then there is the second phase. At some time in the future, the Government will say, ““No, it is not a question of what you want but what we want””. They will insist that you have it whether or not you like it. We heard from the Minister that the system was being phased in in that way—that they were trying to avoid the big move to compulsion. One of the most extraordinary features of the project is the timescale, to which the Minister referred earlier—the initial consultation in, I think, 2002; the announcement in the House in November 2003; and here we are at the start of 2006. Yet even that first phase, debated in the previous amendment, will not be implemented until 2008; and the really compulsory phase, when everyone is brought in, will be quite a long time after that. I cannot remember exactly when, but Ministers have made it clear that there will be quite a long pause before we get there. Yet we are told that the whole object of this compulsory scheme is to deal with serious problems afflicting the nation: fraud, crime, illegal immigration and terrorism; so we have to have this great scheme. But it cannot be as urgent as that or we would be introducing it now. I find it extraordinary that, while we are waiting to see how the scheme works and for the reports of the commissioner on how it operates in practice—I hope we will have those reports before we reach the final compulsion stage—we are told, ““Oh well, we can rely on the debates held at the introduction of this legislation. We may then be content with the order-making power””, enhanced or fallible though it may be in the way that has been hinted at. By then, our experience may be so different from what the Government have indicated at this stage that our knowledge about the effective ways to address the political problems of issues such as fraud and crime may be quite different. We may have changed our view on terrorism by then. Surely we ought to be able to debate these matters in the normal way, thus making sure that the detailed legislation then introduced is correct and able to deal with the situation at the time. It would build on the experience gained during the long period of the scheme’s introduction. Over the years, surely we have learnt one thing: the devil is in the detail. I remember how the great parliamentarian Tam Dalyell would repeat that saying again and again during our constitutional debates. How right he was to do so. It is as true today as it was then. Just because the timescale is so extended there is an overwhelming case, in addition to that so eloquently described by my noble friend in moving the amendment, for ensuring that we start again and look at the situation as it exists at that point. Parliament should have its normal rights and freedom to carry out the job of seeing legislation through in the appropriate manner.