All passport holders to be fingerprinted

Every person applying for a new passport will have to be fingerprinted from next year, it emerged today.

Plans to fingerprint every British national were thought to have been temporarily abandoned when legislation to bring in identity cards was scrapped earlier this month.

But it has now been revealed that the Government plans to use powers it holds in Common Law to force people applying for new passports to do so in person and provide a fingerprint.

The change will initially affect the 600,000 a year who apply for a passport for the first time but is expected to be extended to all renewals - some five million a year - within months.

The police are to be given the authority to carry out checks against this newly created national fingerprint database.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has authorised the passport service to expand massively the number of offices it runs, from seven to over 70, so that it can cope with the new system.

A ?415million funding boost to the passport service to introduce these new "biometric passports" has already been agreed with the Treasury, according to The Guardian newspaper.

Civil liberty campaigners fear that, with 80 per cent of British citizens holding a passport, the new fingerprint database will open up the potential of routine identity checks using fingerprint scanners, whether or not the individual is carrying a passport at the time.