It should be noted that the vast majority of forged or falsely applied for identity documents in Britain are *foreign* documents, which even a perfect British national ID Card scheme could do nothing to prevent.

See the Metropolitan Police's Operation Maxim:

http://www.met.police.uk/op_maxim/

"The majority of cases dealt with by Maxim involve identity document fraud of some description.

In 2004 the following seizures were made of documents that were either forged or obtained by obtained by fraud;

* 394 Passports
* 156 UK National Insurance Cards
* 46 UK Driving Licenses
* 19 Other UK based ID documents
* 8200 Non UK ID documents
* 30 Immigration stamps"

In other words, *over 93%* of the false or fraudulently obtained Identity Documents seized by Operation Maxim were foreign documents, over which the UK Government will not have control.