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Identity Cards Bill

The Government have decided not to seek to reverse Lords amendments Nos. 19 and 20, which removed clauses 6 and 7 on the procedure for introducing compulsory registration. The clauses dealt with the requirement to register and be issued with an identity card in the second stage of the identity card scheme and for compulsion to be brought into effect by way of secondary legislation made under this Bill and subject to the super-affirmative procedure. We agree that those provisions should be dropped. It is worth dwelling on the background to the issues. The Home Affairs Committee, in its fourth report of 2003–04, said: "““The move to compulsion is a step of such importance that it should only be taken after the scrutiny afforded by primary legislation: the proposed ‘super-affirmative procedure’ is not adequate.””" We decided from the beginning that there is substance to the Committee’s point: it is a sufficiently important step from the first stage to the second stage and compulsion to require a vote in both Houses. In the early stages, we decided that the super-affirmative procedure should apply, but many—not least the House of Lords—disagreed, and that is the territory covered by the amendments.