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Identity Cards

Well, I am sure that is true, but my contention is that if we had the register without the cards, that would still fulfil the crime prevention aspect but it would not fulfil the consumer aspect. The first thing to do, which we have got right, is to make it absolutely clear that the cards are not compulsory now and never will be. Several speakers have said that the Bill always stated that there would be the need for further primary legislation to make them compulsory, but we were ambiguous as to whether that would happen. If they are intended to help the consumer, as I contend, the first step in building confidence in that objective is to make it clear that they are voluntary. If they are voluntary, the question of their being an imposition—something that restricts people's liberty—does not arise, because if someone does not want one, all they have to do is say, "No, I will not have it." The Government have taken an important step forward on that. The next thing that we need to address is the audit trail, which has barely been mentioned this evening. One of the main objections of libertarians, including so many Liberal Democrat voters, even though the hon. Member for Eastleigh has not stressed this issue, relates to the audit trail, because they suggest that by keeping track of the number and type of organisations that have inquired about the identity of an individual one can build up a picture of the kind of person that individual is and that that could be used against them to try to profile them as being a higher or lower risk. That genuine issue needs to be addressed, although I hope that such a situation would not arise. The original reason why the audit trail was to be included was to protect people and give them the reassurance that they could see which organisations had been looking at their data. If we are serious about that and it really is the purpose of the audit trail, we should give the individual the power either to dispense with the audit trail or to edit it. By "edit", I mean that if the trail records that I had visited a particular bank on a particular date, I would be able to look up the record to verify that, ensure that no entries had been made that I did not authorise and then choose, if I so wished, to say that I wanted the record deleted, and all that would then be left would be a note saying that I had deleted a record on such and such a date. If we were to introduce such a power, we would go a long way towards reassuring people who are afraid that the database will, in some way, be used to profile them. If the purpose of the audit trail is to protect people, we should be willing to introduce such a power. We need to distinguish between the urgent and the merely desirable.