Bounty would help ID card claims think tank

People should be given £50 as a way of increasing take-up of a national ID card, a campaign group has proposed.

MigrationwatchUK said on Monday that offering money and not making the scheme compulsory would be the only way to make the plan work.

The idea is backed by home secretary David Blunkett and has been endorsed by the prime minister.

But it has run into stiff opposition from other members of the Cabinet.

Under the group's proposals, people would only have the card if they wanted to claim social security and the short-term cost of paying people would be met by savings through detecting fraud.

Its ideas were set out in a policy paper written by IT expert Nigel Foster, who helped create computer systems for the DVLA in the 1980s.

Details such as photographs, fingerprints, DNA and iris scans could be stored on a central system to create a "virtual card" that would not need to be carried around.

Migrationwatch UK estimated that their idea would take eight years to put in place and cost £7 billion with running costs of £500 million.

"ID cards are increasingly being seen as being an essential part of the enormous task facing us if we are to regain control of our borders and begin to reduce the massive abuse of the social security systems, including the NHS," said Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationwatchUK.

"This scheme deals with the three main objections to ID cards. They need not be carried, there is no point in forging them and there is no compulsion.

"People will only need to apply for them if they wish to receive benefits from the state. That, surely, is common sense."