Manchester residents become first in UK to apply for ID cards

Residents in Manchester will today become the first people in Britain to be able to apply for ID cards.

They can now directly apply to attend appointments from November 30 to have their photograph and fingerprints taken for the £30 cards at Manchester's passport office.

Junior Home Office Minister Meg Hillier said the cards would be particularly useful for students and young people as they would "save the cost and hassle" of getting into clubs and bars.

Anyone over 16 in the city with a UK passport can apply for a card.

Ms Hillier told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Really for a lot of people it's a day-to-day convenience thing.

"For a lot of young people ... they often take their passports to prove their identity in nightclubs and bars and the Passport Service sweeps these up every week.

"So for a lot of people it'll save the cost and hassle of taking your passport, risking losing it and instead you've got this very convenient little credit-sized card.

"I've got one and it's very useful."

The ID cards were very hard to copy and were very secure, with biometric information stored on a database, she added.

"This is not a database that can be downloaded onto disks," she said.

"It's going to be held in different places so there'll be fingerprints and your picture on one database and your biographical information (on another), which is I must stress just the same as what's held by the Passport Service anyway ... and they will be linked together by another database."

The database would only be used for "serious crime issues" or identity concerns at a border.

Former shadow home secretary David Davis said: "The lack of confidence the Government has in this scheme is evident by the fact that they have made no estimate of the take-up of this trial.

"This is hardly surprising when the minister believes it is only useful for getting into nightclubs and collecting parcels. This is a far from robust defence of one of their most expensive follies."

ID cards will be launched nationwide from 2012 but they will not be compulsory.

The Liberal Democrats pointed to "staggering" official figures which showed the Government was spending nearly £230,000 a day on developing ID cards and biometric passports.

Between April 2006 and September 2009, the Identity and Passport Service spent £216.1 million on future development projects for ID cards and biometric passports.

Spending so far for 2009-10 (between April and September 2009) is at a record high of £42 million - £229,508 every day.

In 2008-09, £81.5 million was spent, in 2007-08 £61.7 million and in 2006-07 £30.9 million.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne said: "Such enthusiastic spending is brazen when public finances are under such strain and opposition to the scheme is mounting.

"Ministers should explain exactly what this money is being lavished on. It is no good to pretend they do not know what ID cards cost.

"Any taxpayers' money spent on ID cards is wasted - they will not fight terrorism, cut crime or halt illegal working.

"The Government should put an end to the ID cards fiasco and use the huge amount of money saved to put 10,000 more police on the street."