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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I have some sympathy with that. The difficulty is that I cannot accept my noble friend Lord Selsdon’s amendment, because I would have to accept the rest of the Bill—and that is the bit that I do not like. As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, says, the problem is the register at the foundation of the Bill. My noble friend Lord Selsdon has raised some interesting questions, which the Minister needs to answer. The public have not yet thought through how an ID card will look to them. If one is asking for proof of identity, one needs to have some security in looking at an ID card and knowing whether it is likely to be an ID card or not. One will not have a reader, whatever the technological ways of reading it might be; one is going to have to have a visual check. So we need to know what will be on the face of the card. Is it going to look the same in all circumstances in which it may be issued? We come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, that the problem is really with the rest of the Bill and the register. This is an identity register Bill, and I therefore look forward to my noble friend Lord Selsdon’s Amendment No. 120A.