Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Pete Wishart and Julie Hilling

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Good riddance to the most thoroughly bad rubbish. Thank goodness we are standing on the brink of getting rid of the pernicious and hated ID cards. They were new Labour ID cards—NLID cards, as I called them in the previous debate—created solely by the previous Government. They are now thankfully being abolished, and I give great credit to the coalition Government for being able to introduce this Bill so quickly. Thank goodness we are getting shot of these cards today.

I also wish to pay tribute to the many campaigners who fought so hard and long to ensure that we never saw ID cards introduced in this country. I am referring to NO2ID, Liberty and all the other groups that were out there campaigning. This became a real election issue, and I am sure that other hon. Members also found that it was regularly raised in the hustings. People talked about Labour’s creeping authoritarian state and its anti-civil libertarian agenda, and how Labour must be stopped. Thankfully, today is the day that we can put to bed not just ID cards but, I hope, the whole anti-civil libertarian agenda that the Labour party tried to foist on us.

This Bill has been relatively easy for the Liberals and Conservatives as well as for those of us in the Scottish National party and other national parties. We opposed these things—we hated them and we wanted rid of them. This has been a real challenge for Labour Members and I have watched their agony throughout this Bill. I did not know whether they were going to oppose it or support it. I had to wait for the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) to get to his feet to know whether it would be the first line of the next Labour manifesto or whether they were going to support the scrapping.

I still do not know what Labour Members’ response to ID cards is. They have not opposed them in any way. They supported Second Reading—or abstained—and they proposed tame, minimal amendments in Committee. We have heard a lot of huff and puff today about compensation, but I still do not know what the Labour party’s approach to ID cards is. I would like to hear—perhaps in the summing up—whether it has now dropped the whole idea. I hope that it has, because Labour should come home. We need the Labour party in opposition to come home to its civil libertarian past.

[Julie Hilling]

When poor people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency want to open a bank account or do any of the many things for which people need to prove their identity, if they do not drive and do not have utility bills how will they prove their identity in his new free world?

[Pete Wishart]

This is the thing that the Labour party consistently refuses to appreciate and understand. ID cards were an attempt to change the whole nature of the relationship between the individual and the state. That was what they were about. People in groups such as Liberty and NO2ID did not oppose ID cards because they were a nice cuddly little thing that would help people to access services—they opposed them because they were a new element to the relationship between state and individual. That was why ID cards became so hated throughout the nation.