My honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality (Liam Byrne) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

The House will wish to know that I am publishing today strategic action plans for the national identity scheme and for borders, immigration and identity. Copies of both documents have been placed in the Libraries of the House.

The action plan for the national identity scheme draws on the recommendations made in the July 2004 report of the Home Affairs Committee and the August 2006 report of the Science and Technology Committee on identity cards. The action plan sets out how we will provide a comprehensive and secure way of managing the personal identity data of everyone who legally resides or works in the United Kingdom, and confirms that the Home Office will begin issuing biometric ID to foreign nationals, from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), from 2008 and identity cards to British citizens from 2009.

An effective national identity scheme will deliver benefits in a number of key areas. It will:

help to secure our borders and tackle illegal immigration: effective identity management will make it much more difficult for people to live and work in the United Kingdom unless they are entitled to do so;

prevent identity fraud: the use of false identity currently costs the UK economy more than £1.7 billion a year. The national identity scheme will make it much more difficult for such fraud to occur;

become a key defence in the fight against crime and terrorism: the national identity scheme will make it more difficult for false identities to be used to support crime and terrorism;

enhance identity checks, including as part of safeguards for the vulnerable: the scheme will introduce a high level of efficiency in authentication of identity in a variety of transactions; for example, the checks on people working with children and the most vulnerable;

improve public services: the national identity scheme will make it possible to deliver more efficient and effective public services, by ensuring we have a consistent means of identifying customers.

In delivering these benefits we will:

Ensure that the scheme delivers best return on investment: not only are the benefits economically tangible but around 70 per cent of the cost of the combined passport and ID card will be required to keep our passports up to international standards.

Take an incremental and pragmatic approach: we will keep risks and costs down by using existing government investment in IT systems and delivering incrementally based on extensive piloting and trialling.

Provide key safeguards which protect the privacy of the individual and ensure the integrity of the scheme: these exist at every level, from the legislative framework that underpins the scheme and the national identity scheme commissioner who will oversee it, to the security of the systems that will hold information.

Deliver a positive customer experience: the Identity and Passport Service has a customer service reputation that is second to none and we will ensure that those standards are maintained as we introduce the key changes described in the national identity scheme action plan.

The borders, immigration and identity action plan sets out how we will use the national identity scheme to strengthen our borders and enforce compliance with our immigration controls within the United Kingdom. It is an important step forward in delivering the reform plan, Rebuilding Confidence in our Immigration System, published in July 2006.

The borders, immigration and identity action plan explains how we will use biometric technology and identity management to help us to deliver the transformation we need in our immigration system. From 2008, we will:

screen and store biometric ID for everyone from the 169 nationalities outside the EEA applying to work, study or stay in the UK for more than six months;

also require biometric ID for people from 108 nationalities applying to visit the UK, even for periods shorter than six months;

undertake electronic background checks on 30 million people, start checking fingerprints at borders and, increasingly from 2009, count visitors in as they land and count them out as they leave;

roll out biometric ID progressively to foreign nationals from outside the EEA who are already in the UK and reapply to stay;

introduce new identity checking services for employers and other government agencies; and

begin to issue a national insurance number only when a biometric identity has been established.

This improved identity management system will help us to deliver against five key objectives:

people we are concerned about will be stopped from coming here before they travel; our border controls will be much tougher; illegal working will become more difficult; the benefits system will be protected from abuse; and people who commit offences or abuse our immigration laws will be easier to detect, detain and deport from the UK.

We have already comprehensively tested the technology we need to do this, and we know that it delivers results.

Nearly 4 million facial biometric British passports have now been issued.

Our new biometric visa system has already caught out more than 1,500 people who have previously claimed asylum or been fingerprinted for other immigration purposes and were trying to return to the UK.

Electronic checks on travellers have generated 6,000 border alerts for people on warning lists attempting to travel to and from the UK, resulting in 620 arrests.

Mobile fingerprint equipment used by enforcement officers identified more than 7,000 foreign nationals during enforcement operations in the first five months of 2006.

More than 51,000 people have now enrolled in the iris recognition immigration system (IRIS), allowing speedy passage for registered travellers, now operating at a number of UK ports.

We will build on this success, using proven technology and practical expertise. And we will continue to work closely with a range of partners across government, the private sector and internationally.

We have already laid before Parliament on 9 October 2006 the first report of the likely costs of the ID cards scheme and, as required by the Identity Cards Act 2006, we will provide further reports of cost estimates on a six-monthly basis. As with any such long-term plans, they will evolve over time. The plans we are publishing today set out our current intentions and focus in particular on what we intend to deliver between now and 2010. As with any undertaking of this scale, there is still much detailed planning work to be done, and we will learn many lessons as we start to deliver. We shall adjust the details of the action plans as required by experience and we shall keep Parliament and the public informed of any changes. The national identity scheme is an ambitious and long-term programme that will create a comprehensive identity management infrastructure for the whole of the United Kingdom.