As Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, linked the increasing threat of identity theft to the need for ID cards yesterday, new figures showed that the crime had grown by 600 per cent in the past five years.

Latest figures showed there were 119,000 cases of identity theft in 2004, an annual increase of 20 per cent in identity theft cases reported by the 240 members of Cifas, which shares information between all Britain's banks, credit card companies and financial services companies.
In 1999, there were only 20,000 identity thefts.