Charles Clarke, then Home Secretary, answering a question from Ian Paisley, in the House of Commons during the second reading of the Identity Cards Bill:
[...] the Identity Cards Bill does not allow information to be provided from the national identity register to any foreign Government. That is the position--full stop.
Joan Ryan, now Minister of State responsible for ID cards, answering a written question from Lynne Jones, last week:
Section 18 of the Identity Cards Act allows information [from the national identity register] to be provided to overseas authorities, for example law enforcement agencies, for the purposes of criminal proceedings and investigations, as provided for in section 17 of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001.
The most charitable interpretation is a quibble over the difference between `allow' meaning to create a new power, and `allow' meaning to fail to prohibit the exercise of one which already exists.
Anyway, since that was about ID cards, you get a holiday photo: