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| Version 0 | Version 1 |
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| Climbdown over airport ID cards | Climbdown over airport ID cards |
| (20 minutes later) | |
| Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. | Home Secretary Alan Johnson has dropped plans to make ID cards compulsory for pilots and airside workers at Manchester and London City airports. |
| The cards were being trialled there prior to a national roll-out - sparking an angry reaction from trade unions. | The cards were being trialled there prior to a national roll-out - sparking an angry reaction from trade unions. |
| Mr Johnson said the cards would still be rolled out to the rest of the UK on a voluntary basis - with London to be offered them a year early, in 2010. | |
| The Tories and Lib Dems say they would scrap the controversial scheme. | |
| Voluntary basis | |
| As a result of Mr Johnson's announcement, foreign nationals living and working in the UK will be the only group of people who will have to have the cards, with 50,000 already having been issued. | |
| BBC political correspondent Jo Coburn said the government's original vision for ID cards was that the scheme would eventually become compulsory. | |
| But the government has always insisted it would not make them compulsory for UK citizens without giving MPs a vote on the issue - and it would not be compulsory to carry them. | |
| ID cards were initially promoted as an anti-terror measure, but Mr Johnson said they should not have been sold as the "panacea for tackling terrorism." | |
| The rollout of the ID card scheme will be accelerated on a voluntary basis for UK citizens, starting in Greater Manchester by the end of the year. | |
| Residents in other locations in the North West will be able to apply from early 2010, while the government's intention is to roll out the scheme in London in the same year - 12 months early. | |
| Some 3,500 UK citizens have already applied for the cards. |