Birmingham Airport is to be asked to install controversial security scanners which see beneath a passenger’s clothes.

Transport Secretary Justine Greening said new technology would allow passengers’ modesty to be protected.

Airports have been reluctant to install the scanners because they use electromagnetic technology to produce images which make passengers appear naked.

However, the most modern scanners use computer technology to remove the image of the traveller, so that officials at the airport see only the items they are carrying.

Currently, only Manchester, Heathrow and Gatwick airports use electromagnetic scanners but in a statement to the House of Commons Ms Greening said: “I have also been considering whether security scanners should be rolled out more widely at UK airports. 

“In principle, I believe that they should.”

She added: “However, I want to make sure that this is done in conjunction with the availability of enhanced screening technology with better privacy safeguards.

"The precise timing of further deployments will therefore be dependent on how quickly the new generation of security scanners is developed.”

Birmingham Airport has been asked to install the scanners once before, and former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis told the House of Commons back in February 2010 that he expected them to be operating at the airport by the end of the month.

But the airport chose not to install them until it could be certain that the privacy of passengers would be respected.

A Birmingham Airport spokesman said: “We will engage fully in any discussion that the Department wishes to have about the deployment of body scanners.”

Ms Greening said passengers would not be allowed to opt out of passing through a scanner.

The security drive comes after Nigeran man Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty in a US court to eight charges including terrorism and attempted murder following a plot to blow up a flight between Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

American prosecutors told the court that he had a bomb sewn into his underwear.