Lawyers may be among the first customers of equipment to read UK identity cards, the minister in charge of the scheme said last week.

Meg Hillier, undersecretary of state at the Home Office, told a conference on the business uses of ID cards that one of the benefits of the £4.8bn scheme would be speeding up money-laundering checks. ‘For legal transactions it might well be worthwhile [solicitors] having a reading machine to quickly verify ID,’ she said. ‘It should speed up the process.’

The Identity and Passport Service began issuing cards to non-EU residents of Britain last November. They will be offered to ‘early adopters’ from next year, the Home Office said. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats both say they would scrap the scheme.