Blue Peter presenters will announce the restoration of privileges for the shows' badge holders on this afternoon's programme - as long as they submit to an under-age ID card scheme.

Naughty kids had been "defrauding the system" by selling their Blue Peter badges over the internet, it emerged in March.

BBC producers declared a hiatus on its iconic badges while they lamented the extent to which British society had degraded in the 43 years since they were first introduced, and worked out a scheme to regiment their badge-holding viewers.

The new Blue Peter badge will come with a photo-ID card. The BBC warned that it would be illegal to sell the card and it would use the law to go after websites like eBay that allowed people to sell them in their bring and buy sales.

"We could ask people to close a sale down because the badge remains the property of the BBC," said a spokesman.

"The world has changed," he said, echoing the proponents of the ID scheme for adults. But now the BBC was clamping down, it would be more difficult for people to abuse the system.

50,000 Blue Peter badges are handed out every year to children who perform feats of charity or daring do for the show's producers.®