Workers at London City and Manchester Airports will be used to test the UK national identity card.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is due to announce that airside workers at the two airports will use the ID cards during an 18-month pilot scheme.

Airport unions are opposed to the plans, saying that workers will need to pay £30 for a card.

Biometric ID Cards

In March, the government announced all airport workers in the UK would be issued with biometric ID cards containing fingerprint information from the second half of 2009.

This is part of the government's wider "E-borders" programme that will see ID cards being issued to foreign nationals from outside the European Economic Area from later this month.

However, the plan attracted fierce opposition from both liberty groups and airport unions.

ID Cards Plan

The announcement that workers at just two airports will receive the cards has been widely regarded as the government climbing down on the original ID cards plan.

Phil Booth, from campaign group No 2 ID, told BBC News: "We are seeing a rather transparent attempt, I think, to save some ministerial face.

"The unions and the industry are clearly opposed to this and if the government were to try to force this on the 200,000 airside workers they had previously claimed then they would find themselves either in court or facing industrial action."

The British Air Transport Association (BATA) said the plan was "half-baked."

BATA Secretary General Roger Wiltshire said his industry could see no benefit from the ID card scheme, since airside workers were already subject to rigorous security checks - indeed, at Manchester there is already a biometric access control system in operation.

Wiltshire told Reuters: "We won't be volunteering ourselves for this until we do see some real benefits from going ahead with it."

Source - Airport International's Aviation Correspondent

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