Breakfast meeting with a briefing from Liberty on ID cards. Won’t rehearse the arguments here – but am sharing platform with Tony Benn and George Galloway on the subject next Wednesday. Of course we will all be on the side of the angels and against ID cards – and almost certainly so will the audience. But delighted to be involved in fighting what I regard as one of the most outrageous attacks on civil liberties in my lifetime (and it’s a long list to choose from – control orders, removal of right to trial by jury, loss of freedom of speech…).

I have been shocked by the ravages of Labour on the very heart of all the things I believe in. It’s even worse close up in Parliament.

At the Lib Dem Home Affairs Team meeting – the news is that Evan (who was going to lead on the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill next week) is now going to have to address a health conference. As Alistair Carmichael (Deputy Shadow Home Secretary) can only do the Tuesday – I will have to lead on it on the Thursday. It’s fine – I have never even attended a Bill Committee – but I am sure by next Thursday I will know it all – I will have to!

Into Prime Minister’s Questions. It is fun – but I am not attempting a question as yet. A couple of ours bob up and down trying to get called – but the whole half hour passes without a Lib Dem being called at all. Is this fair? It’s up to Mr Speaker basically – and I guess we just didn’t catch his eye.

In the evening, we new MPs, the Lib Dem intake of 5th May ’05, meet at the National Liberal Club for a dinner – partly to get to know each other but also to examine what we have seen, heard and experienced so far with our own party.

It was quite an exciting evening with challenging contributions from each new MP around the table. We form about a third of the Lib Dem parliamentary party – so a substantive grouping – and plenty of thoughts about how we want to see things turn out.