The Government has said that it will limit its ID card trial to just two airports.

In a speech hosted by the Social Market Foundation, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said only Manchester and London City airports would take part in an 18-month trial to give airport workers ID cards in 2009.

Ms Smith said people working in "sensitive roles or locations" in these airports would be forced to apply for a card.

In addition the Government will begin giving out cards as planned to two categories of foreign nationals who, officials say, are most likely to abuse immigration rules. These are students and those on a marriage or civil partnership visa. They will have to apply for identity cards from 25 November.

Within three years, all foreign nationals applying to enter or remain in the UK will also be required to have a card. It is expected that around nine in 10 foreign nationals in Britain will have cards by 2015.

This has angered anti-ID card group No2ID, which suggested the Home Office was essentially dropping the scheme, but pushing forward with the trials to avoid embarrassment.

Phil Booth, national coordinator for the group, said: "Dropping to trials at a couple of airports is a transparent attempt to save ministerial face.”

However, a Home Office spokeswoman said this was not the case and plans remained "on track".

Ms Smith also outlined plans for private firms, shops and the Royal Mail to bid for contracts to fingerprint people for the new identity cards.

Under the plans applicants would have all 10 fingerprints and their faces scanned. The data would then be passed to the Identity and Passport Service to be stored on the new, computerised National Identity Register.

A Home Office representative confirmed that the Government wanted to create a network of places where people could easily go to complete the application procedures for the biometric documents.

However, he said that these were currently just proposals and details of the scheme, if it went ahead, would be disclosed later on.