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Identity Cards

The hon. Gentleman clearly was not listening to what I said a moment ago. The big issue that we have when it comes to people getting into and out of the country is the lack of a proper border police force. That has been central to the strategy that the Conservative party has put forward for a long time. The Government made an attempt to copy the policy two years ago but failed to do so properly. We need properly policed borders. The new Home Secretary raised expectations that he would change things, but immediately he rowed back from that and said:""We remain on course to bring in a policy that we believe has widespread public support"." He added:""In my very first interview as Home Secretary I made clear that ID cards were a manifesto commitment and that legislation governing their introduction was passed in 2006"." It was reported that the contract to make the cards—for which Fujitsu, IBM and Thales were bidding—would not be awarded until the autumn of 2010, a year later than expected. Then came last week's announcement, in which the Government abandoned plans to make identity cards compulsory for British citizens, to scrap the airside scheme and to extend the voluntary scheme in Manchester to the north-west as a whole. I have to say that I still do not understand how a voluntary scheme works. What is the policing benefit of a voluntary scheme. If a police officer stops someone in the street, can he ask for an ID card? The person can say, "I didn't want to have one, so I can't produce it." Where is the benefit to an individual of buying an ID card and, more to the point, where is the benefit to the country of spending billions of pounds on setting up the mechanisms in the hope that someday enough people will buy enough of the cards to get that money back? It seems to me to be a scheme without a purpose. Even last week's announcement was not the final thing to be said. Despite what appeared to be a final clarification from the Home Secretary, the noble and dark Lord Mandelson intervened and insisted that the Government still planned full take-up of ID cards. He insisted that the Government have""always made clear we want to move to a full take-up of ID cards and what Alan Johnson has said is fully consistent with that."" He was quoted as saying that last week. Perhaps the Home Secretary could clarify. Given that the noble and dark Lord is de facto the Prime Minister of the country at the moment, and appears to have rowed back on the Home Secretary's commitment of last week that the scheme would only be voluntary, will the Home Secretary clarify the scheme's status? Will he categorically rule out compulsion and will he say that Lord Mandelson's comments were wrong?