Member News
Immigration minister Phil Woolas has announced applications for ID cards will commence later this month, available to both Home Office civil servants and passport service staff.
Applications can be made from October 20 for a fee of £30, with the scheme extending to residents of Greater Manchester and workers at Manchester and London City airports later this year.
In a written ministerial statement to Parlaiment, Woolas announced the scheme would initially apply to people "working in the Home Office, the Identity and Passport Service and elsewhere who are engaged on work relating to the issue of identity cards".
The voluntary scheme would be extended in early 2010 to other locations in north west England, the immigration minister said.
The Conservatives criticised the announcement.
Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "The government is reduced to selling ID cards to its own staff in a desperate bid to prove that someone, somewhere, thinks that they would benefit from the identity card scheme."
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd