UK ID cards 'will allow crime fingerprint checks'
Pastor Dale Morgan
UK ID cards 'will allow crime fingerprint checks'
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By George Jones, Political Editor
Last Updated: 2:13am GMT 20/02/2007
People who get identity cards will have their fingerprints checked
against those found at the scene of nearly a million unsolved crimes,
Tony Blair said last night.
Responding to a petition on the No 10 Downing Street website calling for
the proposed introduction of ID cards to be scrapped, Mr Blair said the
biometric recognition details, such as fingerprints, would be entered on
a new National Identity Register.
In an email to the 28,000 people who signed the online petition, Mr
Blair said the register would help police bring those guilty of serious
crimes to justice.
"They will be able, for example, to compare the fingerprints found at
the scene of some 900,000 unsolved crimes against the information held
on the register."
The Government is already building up a national DNA register by
authorising the police to take saliva swabs from anyone who is arrested
– even if they are not charged – as well as those convicted of serious
criminal offences.
Mr Blair's email appears to contradict an assurance given by Tony
McNulty, a Home Office Minister, when the legislation was going through
the Commons in 2005. Mr McNulty said there were safeguards against state
agencies "for want of a better phrase, going fishing in the database".
The Conservatives are committed to scrapping the ID card scheme, which
they claim will cost at least £5 billion.