One million ID cards every year from 2009
Home Secretary takes wraps off biometric card
The UK will produce up to one million ID cards for foreign nationals every year, according to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
Smith was speaking at an event in London today where she revealed the design of the card for the first time.
Foreign nationals, including children of all ages, will be issued cards from 25 November and will need to produce them in order to get easier access to services including non-emergency healthcare.
Some 50,000 of the cards will be produced for foreign nationals by the UK Border Agency until next March, with private contractors starting to produce cards for parts of the UK population from 2009.
The first foreign nationals to get the cards will be "people applying for a right to study in the UK" and "people applying for marriage visas" - the two categories that most frequently abuse their terms of residence, Smith said.
This will gradually be increased to all categories of foreign nationals and by 2015 the Home Office expects 90 per cent of foreign residents to have an ID card.
The Home Office is trialling fingerprint enrolment for foreign nationals and has taken 12,000 fingerprints to date, which the Home Secretary said has resulted in four convictions and "a lot of examples of ID switches".
silicon.com's A to Z of Biometrics
Click on the links below to find out everything you'll need to know about biometric security.
A is for Accuracy
B is for Behavioural biometric
C is for Cash machine
D is for Database
E is for Ear
F is for Facial recognition
G is for Gummi bears
H is for Hand geometry
I is for Iris
J is for Juan Vucetich
K is for Keystroke dynamics
L is for Liveness testing
M is for Mobile phones
N is for Network security
O is for Oxford
P is for Palm
Q is for Queues
R is for Registration
S is for Signature verification
T is for Twins
U is for Universality
V is for Voice verification
W is for Walk
X is for X-ray
Y is for Young
Z is for Zurich Airport
Smith said: "We want to be able to prevent those who are here illegally from benefiting from the privileges of Britain and for business to be confident that those they are employing and take onto courses are who they say they are.
"We all want to see our borders more secure and human trafficking, benefit fraud and immigration crime tackled."
Foreign nationals face a fine of up to £1,000 for not submitting to biometric scans for the cards.
ID cards are not yet intended to be compulsory for most UK citizens however and will not be issued to Britons under the age of 16.
The card for foreign nationals will be pink and blue with the royal crest on the front and will hold eight pieces of information including two fingerprints and a scan of a facial photo which will be stored on the chip. It is printed with details of a person's name, date and place of birth, sex, nationality, a card expiry date, place and date of issue, type of permit and remarks.
The card for UK citizens will carry a different design, however.
Smith insisted the Home Office is making good progress in talks with airport operators and unions about airside workers in airports being among the "trusted workers" first in line for the cards in 2009.
Smith said: "Airport workers already face a great deal more checks than is needed for an ID card. It is something they are already used to.
"I expect to be able to issue the cards to British citizens working in UK airports next year."
Smith's comments contradict the stance taken by the UK airlines trade group, British Air Transport Association.
A spokesman for the organisation said: "We do not see any benefits of the scheme and we will continue to oppose it unless some concrete benefit is put forward."
Smith said she believes the £30 cards will be popular and there will be little resistance when the cards are made voluntarily available to British people in 2011.
"There will be a lot of people wanting to take them up," she added.
Smith acknowledged there would be groups of people unable or unwilling to have a biometric ID card - such as the four million elderly people who won't be able to provide a clear fingerprint, according to the Biometrics Assurance Group - but insisted the scheme did not need 100 per cent take up to be effective.
"Because it is so exceptional, it is not going to be a problem that undermines the entire scheme," she said.
Smith attacked the Conservatives for their plans to drop ID cards, saying they were "turning their backs on the protection of our borders", adding such a move would save very little money as 80 per cent of the estimated £4.7bn cost of the scheme is tied into production of biometric ePassports. More than 12.5 million of the first generation biometric ePassports have been issued in the last two years.