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Lord Gould of Brookwood: Both the previous speakers—the latter with great emotion—were arguing for freedom. We have to ask what greater freedom is there than the freedom to place a vote for a political party in a ballot box upon the basis of a mandate and a manifesto. That is the crux of it: the people have supported this measure. That is what the noble Earl's father fought for. But that is too trivial an answer. I know that. The fundamental argument is that the truth is that people believe that these identity cards will affirm their identity. The noble Lord opposite said that he likes to be in this House and how he is recognised in this House because it is a community that recognises him. That is how the people of this nation feel. They feel that they are part of communities, and they want recognition. For them, recognition comes in the form of this identity card. Noble Lords may think that that is strange, but it is what they feel. This is their kind of freedom. They want their good, hard work and determination to be recognised, rewarded and respected. That is what this does.
Of course it is right and honourable for noble Lords to have their views, but I say there is another view, and it is the view of the majority of this country. They want to have the respect, recognition and freedom that this card will give them. Times have changed. Politics have changed. What would not work 50 years ago, works now. It is not just me. I have the words of the leader of your party:
"I have listened to the police and security service chiefs. They have told me that ID cards can and will help their efforts to protect the lives of British citizens against terrorist acts. How can I disregard that?".
This is not some silly idea of the phoney left. It is a mainstream idea of modern times. It is a new kind of identity and a new kind of freedom. I respect the noble Lords' views, but it would help if they respected the fact that the Bill and the identity cards represent the future: a new kind of freedom and a new kind of identity.
The Earl of Northesk: Would the noble Lord accept that there is a very important distinction to be drawn between ID cards, which many of us who find the Bill objectionable would potentially be prepared to
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support, and the national identity register? The fiction keeps on being trotted out that the public are in support of the Bill because they support ID cards. But the Bill is not fundamentally about ID cards. It is about the national identity register. I concur with all my noble friends who have intimated that their judgment is that the population of the country would be much less inclined to support the Bill if they properly understood its parameters.
Lord Gould of Brookwood: My understanding is that the public want more compulsion, not less, and they want this done quickly, not slowly. The noble Lord is out of step with the public. They want it done because they know the world is changing and that there is fraud, terror and identity theft. They want this done quickly and compulsion cannot come too quickly for them. The noble Lord is in the wrong place.
Lord Thomas of Gresford: The noble Lord will know from his profession that opinion polls in Australia were in favour of identity cards until the proposals were put under parliamentary scrutiny. Then the public mood changed completely and there was a majority against the Bill. Surely the noble Lord is not going to be part of a Government that simply governs in accordance with what opinion polls say at one particular moment and accepts that debate and scrutiny over a period of time, such as we are doing tonight, is a very important part of our democracy.
Lord Gould of Brookwood: The most important part of our democracy is the fact that this is mandated by the manifesto. There are two parts to this: the manifesto commitment, which we must adhere to, and the issue of opinion polls, which I did not raise. Other noble Lords raised them and I am delighted to discuss them. I believe that the public will continue to support ID cards. I think that the support will not fade away. But it is also the case that this measure was part of the Labour Party manifesto. That is a mark of freedom too.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury: I have great respect for the opinion of the noble Lord, Lord Gould, on these matters, and I find myself agreeing with him much of the time. I would be the first to say that this House is the inferior House and must ultimately subject itself to the other place. That is what the Parliament Act and the notion of manifesto obligations are about. But I urge the noble Lord not to press his case in relation to the manifesto too hard.
The noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, made the point—and this is not a trick arithmetic point—that the Government got the support of only 37 per cent of those who voted. That is to say, 63 per cent of those who voted did not support the manifesto with this commitment in it. It is also germane to point out that in terms of the electorate the Government got the support of only one in four. I go further; it is dangerous to say that everything in a 100-page manifesto is somehow imprinted with the will of the British people.
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That seems to be—I do not want to use too strong a word—just not sensible. Frankly, I do not know anybody who read the Labour manifesto. I would be interested to know whether the noble Lord, Lord Gould, did—he probably wrote it, so I withdraw that argument. But how many noble Lords read the Labour manifesto, or the Tory or Liberal Democrat manifestos? I ask the noble Lord to temper his understandable democratic zeal with a bit of reality.
I want to make two other points. The first is that my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford—who has moved a Second Reading debate with his subtle amendment, and God bless him—talked about Holland. I was very interested to hear what is going on in Utrecht, and the case is much stronger than the noble Lord realises because the Dutch have no national database. The thing that most of us are most concerned about is a national database with all the cross-referrals to every government department that ever existed and the cross-referral under Section 17 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, which extends to public authorities abroad as well as here. That is what we dislike. That is the big brother. That is the managerialism that has become the dominant feature of British life and, Heaven help us, is becoming the dominant feature of British politics. I, for one, say that that is not my idea of democracy or freedom. It is not my idea of why this place exists. In Holland, there is no national database or biometrics and there is a choice between an ID card and some other recognised card of identification, such as a driving licence. It is a stronger case than my noble friend makes.
I shall make the point that my noble friend Lord Thomas uses the word "surveillance". That is a sinister word and that is why he chose it. The problem with this debate is that nobody sitting on the Government Benches is sinister. That really is a problem because you are dealing with reasonable, decent, freedom-loving people. I come back to the point: it is not our job to assume that governments for all time are going to be of that ilk and it behoves us on an issue such as this to be a touch cynical about the potential of future governments and authoritarianism.
Finally, my noble friend Lord Thomas said that this Bill is not honest because it does not talk about surveillance. It does not use that word, but Clause 1(3)—I almost defy any Member of the Committee to get his head around it, as it seems to be written by somebody actually setting out to bamboozle the lot of us—states:
for ascertaining facts about us. If you gut it, that is what it says. "Surveillance" is a loaded word and I therefore would not use it, but the provision comes close. I am supporting my noble friend but undermining him.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: I respect enormously the point of view of the noble Lord, Lord Gould. He holds it passionately, and so do many other people. Perhaps he should have another poll and publish
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Schedule 1 and ask the public whether they want that. I think that what is in Schedule 1 is the problem, not the question of whether people should have identity cards.
The Earl of Erroll: I shall not make another Second Reading speech as a lot of other noble Lords have; I merely refer to my own Second Reading speech when I quoted Benjamin Franklin, which I think is very relevant to this issue. I support the amendment in the interests of honesty, clarity and not being hypocritical. I should be very interested to see a rerun of the Home Office research with the register so renamed.
Lord Maxton: I am loath to rise again but my noble friend Lord Gould said that the world had changed politically, certainly since the 1940s when of course the noble Earl's father—even though he may have been a serving officer in the Army—had to carry an identity card. The fact is that the world has not just changed politically and socially, but dramatically in terms of technology. We live in a world of information, most of which is good. It has freed up the world and freed up people in a way that has not happened in the past.
That information and technology means that, yes, the Government will have information, but large numbers of other organisations will also have all sorts of information about us. Every time you use a bank card in a machine, or every time I use my freedom card on a bus or the Underground—whatever it might be—information is stored and collected somewhere. If I buy a book or a record on Amazon or bid for something on eBay on the Internet, that information is collected. If I want to operate my bank account on the Internet, I have to give my bank large amounts of information, including a password and so on, in order to do so. Why are Members so opposed to the Government having information on them when they are apparently quite happy for all sorts of other organisations to have information about them?
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