Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Pete Wishart and Stephen Pound

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It was a good point.

[Pete Wishart]

It was a good point, and you have rescued me, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I would have found it pretty hard to respond to it. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) for intervening, because I want to pay tribute to him, too, in the course of all this. Of course, ID cards were his child. He argued them through Cabinet and, as he said in his speech, he had all sorts of opposition and he fought his corner. However, he has left the Labour party a dreadful legacy. I hope that it can join the rest of us—where it should be—in ensuring that we can continue to hold this Conservative Government to account.

It was great when the Conservatives were in opposition—of course they were against the anti-civil libertarian agenda—but we will have to watch them like hawks in government, and we need the Labour party on board for that task. We need the Labour party to help to hold the Conservatives to account, because I have a sneaking suspicion that once they have had a good start and once they have their feet under the table, they will start to consider several issues and the old Conservatives will start to come back. We will start to see that move towards the authoritarianism that was a trademark of so many previous Governments. I appeal to the Labour party to help us to hold the Government to account and to get rid of the opposition to this. They should say, “Good riddance” and be thankful that we have got rid of ID cards.

This runs through the whole history of Labour and ID cards. We never even knew what they were for—that was the great thing. We did not know what they were supposed to achieve. When the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough introduced them—he can correct me if I get this wrong—his intention was that there would be a fully compulsory scheme, so that everybody in the UK would have to hold an ID card. That, I believe, was his intention and that was what he wanted to try to deliver. As he tried to get the scheme through, the opposition started to kick in. Opposition to the idea seemed to be growing and growing, so we saw the reasons behind ID cards changing. The scheme changed into a voluntary scheme that not only would keep us safe but could be used to make sure that we could buy services. I believe that being able to play the lottery was one of the great reasons we were given to have an ID card. They became not so much ID cards as super cards that would solve all society’s ills.