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Identity Cards Bill

I am warned, my Lords, and I take the warning. It is played primarily at least by people who are not constituted in the way that I am. However, that seems a pretty futile and absurd way in which to run a government and a country. This House has its views and that House has its views, but what is the relationship between the two? What the noble Lord, Lord McNally, is proposing is a relationship of almost permanent dissent and dispute. The noble Lord shakes his head at me but, with respect, that will do him no good. The fact is that we have to devise a system of resolving the differences between the two Houses. Until we have in this country a proper disputes resolution procedure such as the one written into the American constitution, then it will be the basic relationship between the elected House and the unelected House that continues to matter. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that the House that should prevail ought to be the elected one. Should the elected House prevail now? That argument has gone round and round, but there is nothing new to be said on the issues. It is perfectly clear from some of the contributions from the other side that the argument is not about whether it should be tied to a passport, but whether there should be identity cards at all. The noble Baroness, Lady Park, was—to put it slightly neutrally—pretty strong in what she had to say about identity cards as such. That view was not shared by everyone in your Lordships’ House and is certainly not shared by the general public.