Thousands of people, including two men convicted over terror attacks, obtained passports under false pretences, the Home Office has admitted.

It admitted 10,000 passports were wrongly given in the past year, but said plans to interview applicants would combat such fraud.

One of the men was convicted of a bombing in Morocco, and the other of planning a major attack in the UK.

The Conservatives called the admission "shocking".

The figures were revealed as the Identity and Passport Service gave details of plans for interviews for passports at a network of new offices.

Face-to-face interviews for adults applying for a passport for the first time would be gradually introduced from May, it said.

The two men who obtained false passports were Dhiren Barot and Salaheddine Benyaich.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "This is a shocking admission which betrays chaos at the heart of the passport system."

Downing Street said the multi-billion-pound plans for biometric ID cards would help in the fight against fraudulent applications.

But Mr Davis said it undermined the government's case for its "expensive" ID card system because false passport holders could use the document to get a genuine ID card.

The Liberal Democrats accused the government of using the "bad news" about false passports to back its case for ID cards.

Nick Clegg, the party's home affairs spokesman, said more security features on passports and targeted interviews were a better way of tackling passport fraud.

Damian Green, the shadow immigration minister, and the campaign group NO2ID both said that the interviews would inconvenience millions of law-abiding people, while criminal gangs would find it easy to get round the new safeguards.

'More sophisticated'

The prime minister's official spokesman said each fraud case was being followed up and the problem was being addressed by the interviews.

Ms Ryan said the main threats of fraud came from first-time adult applicants, followed by first-time child applications.

"It appears that the level of attempted fraud is increasing and getting more sophisticated," she said.

IPS executive director Bernard Herdan said applicants would be expected to know answers from a pool of around 200 questions about their personal and financial history, such as previous addresses and when their parents were born.

"We will not ask questions to which we don't know the answers," he said.

"Before the interview takes place, we will have cross-checked that individual against various databases in order to uncover information about them."

BBC

Quote:plans to interview applicants would combat such fraud.

I think they call that `closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.`

Raids target passport factories

Three people have been dealt with by the immigration service
Police have arrested 22 people in an operation to crack down on illegal passport factories.

More 100 officers were involved in the dawn raids on Wednesday, in which 13 addresses across London were searched.

Police said during the operation, codenamed Greenhill, £40,000 in cash was seized as well as fake passports, driving licenses and identity papers.

The raids were led by the Metropolitan Police's Operation Maxim team, which tackles immigration crime.

Of those held, 19 have been arrested on suspicion of a range of crimes including unlawful facilitation, identity card offences and possession and conspiracy to produce and distribute false documents.

Three people have been dealt with for immigration offences.

True identities

Det Ch Insp John Kielty from Operation Maxim, said: "The production of false passports enables others to commit a range of serious crime.

"This operation tackles the criminals who try to hide their true identities from enforcement authorities."

The Metropolitan Police worked with the UK Immigration Service, the Identity and Passport Service, South Yorkshire Police and the Department of Work and Pensions in the latest operation.

The addresses searched were in Walthamstow, Rotherhithe, Ilford, Upper Holloway, South Lambeth, Hackney, Brixton, Kilburn, Stoke Newington, Tottenham, Bermondsey and Greenford.

Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said: "The operation shows our shared determination to attack the organised crime that accounts for as much as three quarters of illegal immigration to Britain."

BBC News