Passport applicants to be interrogated about private and family life

More than 600,000 people a year are going to be forced to attend compulsory interrogations at their nearest Identity and Passport Service interrogation centre.

Once an application has been made on paper, an applicant is 'invited' to telephone a call centre, in order to arrange a face to face interrogation.

James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service, said that questions would be drawn from a stock of 200 based on the "social footprint" of each applicant, including their family history, current household, including all occupants, past addresses, financial background, including mortgage data and credit references, and even the background of the person countersigning the form.

The questions will be based on information from electoral registers, birth and marriage certificates, bank mortgage rolls and credit reference agencies.

Teenagers are likely to be asked about their parents and their background, and who else lives at home with them.

There would be no pass or fail mark but officials would make a judgment on the basis of the whole interview whether an applicant was telling the truth.

If there are suspicions, in some circumstances, police might be called.

From 2009, fingerprints will also be taken from every applicant.

Police State Britain.

Compulsory 128 mile trip to your nearest Interview Centre

More details of the proposed operation of the governments much ridiculed National ID Database Scheme have emerged this week.

People will be forced to travel hundreds of miles, at their own expense, and in their own time, to attend one of the Government ID Interview Centres. That's after you have paid for the privilege of obtaining the compulsory ID card.

Once there, they will then be forced to submit, willingly or not, to a series of biometric tests, the results of which will be stored permanently, and made available to thousands of Government Departments and private corporations and individuals.

Stranraer residents face a 128 mile trip to Kilmarnock to their nearest ID Interview Centre, and people living in Cambridge will be forced to make a 62 mile round trip to Bury St Edmunds.

Shadow home secretary David Davis has also criticised the government's plan to make people travel to interview centres to provide a biometric for the national identity card.

Davis branded the proposals an "outrage", and repeated the Conservative pledge to abolish ID cards if they get into power.

"It is bad enough that we will be forced to pay for an ID card, but to have to pay to go to a government centre to be interviewed and fingerprinted is an outrage," he said.

"The costs will hit low income families and pensioners hardest. Conservatives will abolish this costly plastic poll tax."

A Home Office spokesperson said "This has always been the case and we have been open about it."

The spokesperson said the decision to take fingerprint biometrics (for all 10 fingerprints) and store them in the National Identity Register was outlined in the action plan published last year.

From 2010, all passport applicants, even if they are simply renewing their old one, will also have to apply for an identity card. Fingerprints and iris scans are also required for second generation passports, due out in 2009