Identity Documents Bill

Lord Soley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley]

To follow the noble Lord’s speech is rather pleasant, because he put more passion into it than I could hope to put into mine and because I agree with him. I had not intended to intervene, so I shall brief, but I am increasingly concerned about the way in which the procedures both on issues of this nature and in the House more generally are being changed. As my noble friend pointed out, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, there is a problem about us overturning what the Commons have done. I am not saying that we should do that now, but I am becoming less clear about financial provisions. Very few issues come back to this House that do not involve some expenditure. If the rule is to be no expenditure, there will be an awful lot of things that we will be unable to pursue. That will affect all sides of this House.

I say again, as I have said on many other issues, that the Government are driving through and changing procedures, which is deeply unsatisfactory for this House. We saw it from the Front Bench today. I know that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, is keen to help the House, but to have a Minister telling another Member of the House not to intervene when the other Minister has already accepted the intervention does not fit with the guidance that the House offers. I have my reservations about whether this really is a self-regulating House, but, if it is, one Minister should not intervene to tell a Back-Bencher to sit down and not intervene on a Minister who has already accepted the intervention. It must be wrong. For the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who is sadly not in his place, to follow that up in the way that he did was not helpful. The Government have to recognise that they are not in charge of Parliament. Parliament controls government; government should not control Parliament. We are seeing far too much of this. I support my noble friend Lord Howarth in his request to the Speakers of the two Houses to try to clarify this important issue of expenditure and finance-raising.

On the issue itself, the noble Baroness has strayed into the area of the pros and cons of ID cards. I was always unsympathetic to the idea of ID cards, but the Minister has problems coming down the line. She might want to have a word with her colleague the Minister for Health in this House, who was very helpful to me. A couple of months ago, I raised with him the situation that is developing in the health service where GPs’ surgeries are refusing to register patients unless they produce their passports as ID. They will not accept any other form of ID. By taking away the ID card, we are creating a situation where other things become an ID card. Please do not think that this issue is going away. It will be difficult.

That is another part of the noble Baroness’s problem. Frankly, what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, said in his intervention is absolutely right. It is sheer common decency that when a Government take over and choose to reverse a policy taken by the previous Government, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, they must make sure that ordinary citizens do not lose out. That is what is wrong with this. I am afraid that it also fits in with the danger of the Government trying to run Parliament and not the other way round.

--- Later in debate ---

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, my noble friend has numerous points to answer. Let us hear what she says and whether she can convince the House to agree with another place.

[Lord Soley]

That is unacceptable because the noble Baroness gave a commitment to this House, as has been quoted. The answer to the question is a simple yes or no. If she gave that commitment and then did not deliver on it, she needs to say that. The House will not necessarily hang, draw and quarter on the issue, but we need to know the answer. If the Minister cannot answer that question, I am afraid that the Government have to answer the wider question of what they are doing in this regard, given that they are responsible for this department. If she cannot answer the question, the case for adjourning the House while she finds the answer, as the noble Lord has just suggested, or summoning the Leader of the House is very strong. We cannot have a situation whereby other Ministers keep jumping up to defend this Minister; that cannot be right. The Minister must be responsible for what she said at a previous stage and for what she is saying today. If she is not responsible for that, it is a serious matter.