Members of the public will be able to apply for ID cards early next year, the Home Secretary said today.

Speaking at the launch of the Government’s response to a consultation on ID cards, Jacqui Smith said “small volumes” of cards will be available next year to selected UK residents.

Ministers are considering launching a website in the New Year enabling anyone who wants a card to register their interest. It is anticipated that cards could be sent out to successful applicants by the autumn.

The cards, which will store copies of two fingerprints and a facial scan, will allow holders to travel around Europe without a passport.

They will cost £30 each and will be available for everyone else from 2011. The price of the biometric element of the card has yet to be decided. The overall cost of the ID card and biometric passport scheme is nearly £5 billion.

At an event hosted by the Social Market Foundation thinktank, Ms Smith told invited guests and journalists that the wider scheme will start with the introduction of identity cards for foreign nationals from November 25 this year.

Despite accusations that ministers had “backtracked” on controversial plans to issue identity cards to airport workers, Ms Smith also announced that the scheme would be piloted in just two airports, Manchester Airport and London City Airport. Critics of the plans claimed this was a “complete rollback” from the Government’s original intention.

Ms Smith said: “As we begin to make identity cards available on a voluntary basis to the British public, I know many people will choose to have a card because of the advantages it brings.

“Because let’s consider the alternative - the status quo - where we all need to lay our hands on a variety of documents to prove our identity.”

She went on: “It is, to say the least, a disorganised way of doing things. Worse, it risks confusion and inefficiency. Worse still, the absence of any certain or common standard on identity can mean these processes are subject to fraud, or exploitation, or abuse.

“That’s why, for many years, our contention has been that the National Identity Scheme will provide that certain and common standard.”

The biometric data stored on the cards and the ID card database could be collected on the high street at post office counters or in shops, she said.

She also announced stronger powers for the ID cards watchdog to enforce cooperation by government departments and companies involved in collecting the data.

Under the 18-month trial at airports, paid for by the Government and costing around £1 million, new staff at Manchester and London City airports will be given ID cards instead of their airside passes. Existing workers will also gradually be added to the scheme.

Unions threatened strike action when the plans were first announced, saying they feared their members being used as “guinea pigs”.

The Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “Yet another delay to the Government’s ID cards programme is more evidence of how utterly discredited the scheme now is.

“The Home Secretary’s determination to press ahead with a project that will put the personal data of every citizen in this country at risk is reckless in the extreme.

“Senior experts have told her that the idea of ID cards as a security measure is ’bunkum’, not a week goes by without the Government recklessly losing sensitive information and - to cap it all - the costs of ID cards are enormous.

“At a time of economic hardship, how can the Government seriously expect the public to pay out billions for this expensive white elephant?”

A spokesman for the human rights group Liberty said: “As millions of British families worry about food and mortgages, £5 billion for ID cards moves from the ridiculous to the obscene.

“We have seen the stirring images of Americans choosing to queue for hours to register their vote. Our Home Secretary prefers the chilling picture of Britons compelled to register their fingerprints.”

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