---

Identity Cards

I will certainly do that, but the hon. Gentleman will have to be patient for a while. I am going through the policy in chronological order. In 2002, the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell supported identity cards. In December 2004, the then leader of the Conservative party supported identity cards. The following year, the manifesto on which my party successfully stood in the general election contained a commitment to introduce identity cards. There was no reference in that manifesto to compulsion and no mention of their use in fighting terrorism. So the manifesto made no spurious claims of what identity cards would do. We won the election. Parliament subsequently approved the legislation, and the Identity Cards Act received Royal Assent in 2006.