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Identity Cards Bill

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for addressing specifically the question put by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. If the Government go down the route of designating Criminal Records Bureau checks and the Bill is in its initial form, it is important that they should examine carefully the position of volunteers who may be discouraged from coming forward if there is this extra charge on them. The noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, is absolutely right to take me to task for being so gloomy. Like him, I ought to have confidence in another place—that it will have listened to the debate here; but, more importantly, that it will have listened to the debate outside this House and therefore will consider again, and that it will withstand government pressures to overturn the decisions made in this place. I certainly hope I can have as much confidence as he does. Perhaps there is a glimmer of hope in some corners of the Home Office. I note that the letter we have just received, dated 6 February, refers to the recall of driving licences, something the Minister has referred to. On a couple of occasions I have tried to tease out from the Government whether they intended to overturn the decision of this House on the Road Safety Bill, whereby on 29 November the House removed the Government’s power to recall driving licences because we were concerned it could be used as a step for designation. Unfortunately, Home Office letters are never page-numbered. Perhaps one day it might manage that. When they are e-mailed to me, I put the page numbers in if I am allowed to. Usually I cannot, however, as the Home Office prevents you making any changes to its documents, so you have to download and save them. I say this because I know there are four keen sets of ears over there listening—so please, what about pagination? I shall get back to the important thing. The letter from the Home Office, referring to the fact that we removed that clause from the Road Safety Bill, says that:"““The Road Safety Bill contained a provision for the compulsory surrender of old-form licences. On 29 November the House of Lords voted to remove this clause from the Bill””." There is nothing after that. Usually the Government say, ““and we’re going to seek to overturn it in another place””. I suppose they might be keeping their options open, but let us hope this is a signal that the Government are listening, and might not try to shove that back in again. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 12 [Provision of information for verification or otherwise with consent]: