The Home Office has shown what the national ID card will look like. Like a current passport, identity cards will include your photograph, name, date of birth and signature. They will also include your gender, place of birth, nationality, and issue and expiry dates.
Also included, an electronic chip that will store your facial image and two fingerprint images – linking the owner of the card to their unique biometric identity.
The cards are:
creating one simple form of ID – bringing an end to the disorganised use of photocopied bank statements, phone bills and birth certificates
enabling foreign nationals who are legally living, working and studying here to prove their identity
offering a wallet-sized travel document for use within Europe
The card will be useful for young people, who have to prove their age, on average, more than twice as often as adults. It will also help pubs, shops and supermarkets ensure they aren’t selling restricted goods to underage people.
Availability
The cards will be available, on a voluntary basis, to citizens living in Greater Manchester later this year, becoming available to a wider population in the North West by early 2010 and available to the full population from 2012.
How much?
The card will cost £30 for 2009-10. Home Secretary Alan Johnson said that the cards will allow people to prove and protect their identity in a ‘quick, simple and secure way.’
He said, ‘Given the growing problem of identity fraud and the inconvenience of having to carry passports, coupled with gas bills or six months worth of bank statements to prove identity, I believe the ID card will be welcomed as an important addition to the many plastic cards that most people already carry.’ View the front and back of the card at –
