The Government is consulting people over whether there should be entitlement cards, an updated version of identity cards issued during the Second World War.

But increasingly people are finding they have to provide some sort of identification for all sorts of activities ranging from domestic airline travel to entering nightclubs.

There are advantages in having ID cards, especially at times of terrorist alert such as now, but there are also worries about how they could impact on our civil liberties.

If ID, or entitlement cards, are introduced, there will have to be the same sort of rules as there are over closed-circuit television cameras, which have become widely accepted.

These cards may eventually become part of life in Britain as they are in many other countries.

But there must be safeguards on their use, otherwise they will take away freedom when the idea is to preserve it.