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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Northesk, on tabling this amendment. I should have thought that the Government would consider it to be very helpful. We have heard a good deal about the surveillance society. It is very much with us, and will be with us a lot more when the Bill, and other Bills to come, are passed. I feel quite sure that when Orwell wrote 1984, he did not envisage that this country would be the sort of county he wrote about. He would have been quite horrified if he had realised that eventually we were going to have a compulsory register and compulsory identification cards for every citizen in our land. I believe that he did not think that that could possibly apply in Britain. But, of course, here it is—and it is applying. The Minister has told us very often that the proposals in the Bill have the overwhelming support of the British public. I do not believe that is true. It may be that a focus group has come up with 72 per cent in favour, but I can assure her that the conversation on the buses—I do not know whether she ever goes on the buses—and my postbag tell me that there is a large opposition to this measure. The more people know about it and the more people begin to understand what is at stake, the less they like it. Indeed, Swindon Borough Council, I am glad to say, passed a resolution last week against the imposition of identity cards and an identity register. There is much that should concern us about the Bill. The good thing about this amendment is that it will at least give some reassurance to those people who are concerned that their individual liberty and their individual circumstances could be affected by the Bill, particularly when the register and the ID cards become compulsory.