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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon, in moving his amendment, gave an excellent demonstration of why we needed an identity card because of the multiplicity of uses to which it can properly be put. When we last debated this, I talked about having more than one card if one was an Irish national, for instance, and wanted to have a card that did not have nationality on it. Anyone resident here for three months or more would have an identity card, but it would not identify them as British because it would be held on the basis of residence. So the difference in identity cards was as a result of the group into which the individual who applied for one fell. It is likely, however, that the majority of us would just have the one identity card. The noble Lord talked about bisexuals. I think that he was referring to the comments that I made about transsexuals, those who are moving from one gender to another but needed to have the cards because they had not quite transferred their gender and were therefore in a somewhat delicate position between the two.