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Identity Documents Bill

Perhaps I might concentrate on why people bought the card in the place. If they bought it, as it seems, for a purpose, and that purpose no longer obtains, there is no doubt that we are taking away something from them. Surely, therefore, the answer is not to recompense them but to enable them to continue for the period of the card’s validity to be able to do what it is they bought the card for in the first place. That is a sensible and proper way of doing it. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay—though I may express myself in less elevated language—I feel that the public have every reason to believe that, if they buy something from the Government for a period of time, they should be able to continue to use it in that way. Whereas recompense is an expensive and untidy way of doing it, I really do not see why they cannot go on using it for the time that they were supposed to use it for.