Blair says ID cards will be used to fight crime

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Tony Blair revealed a secret plan to check the fingerprints of every adult in the country to see if they have been involved in a crime.

Police will be allowed to trawl through fingerprints given by anybody signing-up for a controversial ID card.

The Prime Minister said that up to 900,000 unsolved crimes could be solved by comparing fingerprints left at the scene by entries on the new database.

But the revelation outraged civil liberties groups who said Mr Blair was effectively turning every person in the country into a suspected criminal.

In the future, they warned, people would be 'all presumed guilty until proven otherwise.'

Thousands of innocent people could face the indignity of being hauled in to explain why they were present near the scene of an offence - even though they had done nothing wrong.

Mr Blair revealed his plan - which will further inflame the debate over Britain turning into a 'surveillance society' - during a hard-sell on the potential benefits of the £5.4 billion ID cards scheme.

At his monthly Downing Street press conference, he listed reducing identity fraud, illegal immigration and illegal working as reasons for their introduction.

Mr Blair also claimed the cards would make it easier for people to open a bank account, get a mortgage or benefits.

They will only have to carry one piece of ID - rather than passports, driving licences, bills and other documents.

The Premier also insisted the cards would stop migrants from getting non-emergency healthcare or benefits which they are not entitled to, as they will have to produce cards from 2008 to access services.

All are tried and tested justifications for introducing the cards, which are opposed by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

But Mr Blair then, for the first time, said the scheme would also help police to improve the woeful 'crime detection' rate - which leaves three out of every four offences unsolved.

He declared: 'Over the past 50 years, the detection rate has halved.

With a secure ID, we will be able to compare some 900,000 outstanding crime scenes with fingerprints held centrally.'

Officials said more details would be revealed in December, but it will work by giving police access to the fingerprints of everybody who obtains an ID card.

They can then be checked to see if they were left at crime scenes, or on weapons.

Initially, the cards will be voluntary - but Mr Blair suggested they will be made compulsory if Labour wins the next General Election.

The cards will be issued to anybody renewing their passport from either 2008 or 2009, at a combined cost of £93.

Phil Booth, of the NO2ID campaign, said the use of the cards for crime detection directly contradicted the Government's promise not to use the database for 'fishing' expeditions.

He described the move, which effectively makes every adult in the country a potential suspect for the police, as 'function creep writ large'.

Mr Booth said: 'By treating the whole database as being full of potential suspects, you are exposing the entire population to possibly being falsely accused.

'Hundreds, possibly thousands, of people face being yanked in and questioned about something which they had nothing to do with and having to prove they were something else when something happened way back when.

'It is one of the most arbitrary reversals of the presumption of innocence that you could imagine.'

Director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, said: 'What seemed like the usual broken record on ID cards became rather more revealing.

'The Prime Minister finally admitted his ambition to match crime scene fingerprints against those of every man woman and child in the country.

'The mask has slipped. This is the National Suspects Database under which we are all presumed guilty until proven otherwise.'

But Mr Blair insisted: 'In the end, we have a modern world that we are living in, that has new and different types of crime.

'If we don't use technology in order to combat it, then we won't be fighting crime effectively.' Surveys had shown that the public does not 'have a problem' with the use of CCTV cameras and anti-social behaviour orders to protect them from crime, or DNA testing to detect criminals, said Mr Blair.

He added: 'I believe over time we will be able to show people not merely that this is an issue that is important for security, but it actually makes accessing services in modern life far easier for people.'

His comments come after the Government's privacy watchdog, Information Commissioner Richard Thomas, last week warned that Labour has presided over the development of a 'surveillance society' that tracks everyone from cradle to grave using CCTV cameras and DNA and fingerprint samples.

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