Blair - ID cards are 'essential'

ID cards are "essential" in order to tackle the problems of the modern world, Prime Minister Tony Blair has announced.

The Prime Minister wrote an article on the subject for the 'Daily Telegraph' and also addressed the topic in his monthly press conference on Monday.

Mr Blair said that the cards would help to combat illegal immigration, crime and terrorism and said that he wanted to see them being made compulsory for all non-EU foreign nationals coming to the UK to work.

The Prime Minister said that this would make it possible, for the first time, to check accurately those coming into the country, their eligibility to work, for free hospital treatment or to claim benefits.

Addressing the costs of the scheme in the article, Mr Blair wrote: "I simply don't recognise some of the figures that have been attached to ID cards which, too often, include the costs of biometric passports. On present estimates, biometric passports make up 70% - or around £66 - of the cost of the combined passports/ID cards we want. The additional cost of the ID cards will be less than £30 - or £3 per year for their 10-year lifespan."

He said that this was "not a bad price" for tackling problems such as terrorism and international, saying that identity fraud costs £1.7 billion per year.

However, Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said that ID cards would "solve very few problems" and would be "Labour's final act of ineffective and expensive authoritarianism".

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesperson Nick Clegg said: "Tony Blair must be living in cloud-cuckoo land if he seriously believes that the creation of the world's largest identity database will be a magic cure for identity fraud.

"All the evidence from Britain and abroad shows that big government databases just become the favoured target for ever more sophisticated organised criminals."

(KMcA)