The private sector will be asked to collect and supply biometric data in a bid to drive down the cost of issuing identity cards.

The plan was revealed yesterday by home secretary Jacqui Smith along with details of the revised timetable for rolling out ID cards. The National ID Scheme Delivery Plan is now open for consultation.

The document says the government is currently considering how best the recording of fingerprints and photographs can be provided through the market using "competing third parties" required "to meet the highest possible security standards".
The move has been prompted by the huge cost of establishing regional offices for verifying passport applications, which nevertheless require large numbers of applicants to travel for up to two hours to and from interviews.

The Home Office document says the Identify and Passport Service (IPS) will retain decision-making responsibilities but "look to others to help us gather the information we require".

"We are looking to a future where the government would not provide biometric enrolment services. Instead, these would be provided by the market, giving citizens a choice of competing services which should maximise convenience and drive down price," it says.

Some elements would be provided by IPS "in the early years" while work is done to create a marketplace.

Card fees remain guaranteed "at £30 or less" during 2009 and 2010.

An independent review by Sir James Crosby on identity assurance was also published by the Treasury yesterday, looking at how to maximise the economic and social advantage to the UK of having the most effective ID assurance infrastructure in the world.

Tory shadow home secretary David Davis said a suggestion that people could have ID security even without cards would still leave the "dangerous core of the project" in the form of a national register which "will be a severe threat to our security and a real target for criminals, hackers and terrorists".