City Airport to help launch ID cards?
London City Airport will become a pioneer for the controversial ID card scheme.
Staff at the Royal Docks site will be among the first wave of UK nationals to be given compulsory cards despite criticism of the plan from unions.
The Government plans to roll out the scheme to the public from 2012, but many staff at the airport, as well as those at Manchester, can expect to be included by as early as next autumn.
The staff affected would be those who work airside, after security checkpoints.
Chief executive of London City Airport Richard Gooding said: “Providing a safe and secure environment to staff working on site at London City Airport is fundamental to our business.
“In addition to the rigorous pre-employment screening measures already carried out at this airport, the new critical workers identity cards will provide greater assurances to colleagues and the travelling public.
Staff at UK’s airports already go through established security checks for passes which allow them access to airside areas.
The ID card scheme has long been promoted by the Government despite criticism of the plan from unions and civil liberties campaigners.
Foreign nationals will be given the first cards from November 25 and by next April there should be 40,000 issued.
Airport staff will then be given cards in just under a year’s time.
From 2010 the scheme will be rolled out to young people and then also issued to the UK population by 2012.
The Home Office says London City will benefit from the cards because it will make security checks easier and cheaper.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "As identity cards begin rolling out, starting later this month with foreign nationals, we will quickly see that a single, convenient and secure way of proving who someone is will bring real benefits to this country."
However, the ID card scheme has come under heavy criticism from some areas.
Robin Tudge of the pressure group No2ID said: "Workers at City Airport are essentially being set up as guinea pigs for these ID cards.
"The cards are unwanted by industry and public, operationally unproven such that they may even compromise security instead of enforcing it and will benefit only the private contract suppliers."
A spokesman for white-collar Public and Commercial Services Union said: “There are concerns among our members that they are being used as guinea pigs to push through a national ID card scheme.
“Added to this are unanswered questions about the security and integrity of the system and how their data will be held.�
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ID cards? Stasi plastic morelike. It's a disgrace.
It's one means to secure the borders, also coming up are Id cards for foreign students and foreign wives - as if the government is seeking to have this system installed on the basis of xenophobia, then we all have to carry cards to prove we're some dubious foreigner, or so new Labour would have us think. It's racist.
When ID cards were introduced at the outbreak of WW2 they were needed for only three purposes. By the time they were abolished in the early fifties no less than 51 different uses for them had been created, and it was hard to live without one. Dutch ID cards, issued to all citizens at the start of WW2, helpfully identified the cardholder's religion, making it easy for the Germans to round up - and massacre - all Jews. No matter how honourable the government's intentions are, uses for the card will be found that were never intended, and that will enable the state to control our lives even more than today. Resist them at all costs. Their costs are outrageous and the benefits hard to see. There is a very strong case for civil disobedience - enshrined in much socialist writing, as it happens.
Why is the government so intent on ID cards? Here are just three claims made for them
1, To fight terrorism. Balderdash, no terrorist attack of recent years would have been hindered let alone prevented by them.
2. To fight crime? How? One major crime is cocaine production and smuggling and yet the government makes no fuss at all about this problem in relation to ID cards, not when half the media are high on it anyway. Is there any comparable country with ID cards that has a significantly lower crime rate?
3, To cut ID fraud. A very small problem only likely to be greatly exacerbated by placing everyone's personal details in one pot as ID cards and the NIR will do.
....And so on. ID cards are unworkable and expensive but worst of all they completely reverse he relationship between state and individual. Citizens will become answerable to the state rather than the state being answerable to individuals as is the case now.
They must opposed. The cynical deployment of them by New Labour is a disgrace and an affront to all ideals of democracy, fairness and liberty.