Home Office announces first UK citizens to receive ID cards

Citizens could record fingerprints at their local shop

Workers at Manchester and London City airports will be the first UK citizens to be issued with a national identity card next year, while the first UK ID cards will be introduced for foreign nationals on 25 November.

The Home Office released the latest details of the controversial £5bn scheme today. Home secretary Jacqui Smith had previously announced that airport workers - considered to be in a sensitive enough role to require identity verification - would be among the first to have a card, but she has now identified the two locations targeted for an 18-month trial in advance of wider issuance.

So far 12,000 migrants into the UK have been through a biometric enrolment process in a pilot scheme run by the UK Border Agency in Croydon.

And Smith is hoping that shops and Post Offices will offer to act as enrolment points for ID cards by setting up booths to record people's fingerprints.

"The delivery plan I launched in March explained that we are introducing the National Identity Scheme in a way that will deliver most benefit to all of us as quickly as possible," said Smith in a foreword to the government's response to the consultation on ID cards (PDF).

"That means a twin-track approach which prioritises increasing public protection in sensitive areas, and making life easier for people who will gain most in their daily lives from having or using an identity card."

Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have pledged to scrap ID cards if they win the next general election.