Bipartisan support grows for mandatory UK digital ID

The UK’s digital identity project may be moving towards bipartisan support. The Conservative Party is carefully considering the introduction of compulsory digital IDs, according to Shadow Home Secretary and Tory MP Chris Philp.

“I think any government of this country has to be prepared to do whatever it takes to protect our borders from illegal migration,” Philp told the BBC in an interview last week. “I think it is certainly something we should be considering very carefully.”

There is a very strong case for proving identity for claiming benefits, using the National Health Service (NHS) and using other services paid by taxpayers, he continues. Compulsory, universal ID cards, however, also bring up questions around civil liberties, personal freedom and excessive intrusion by the state, he adds.

“I think that is a legitimate and valid debate to have, and I think any responsible party should think about it very carefully,” says Philp.

His statements followed Kemi Badenoch’s June comments, in which the Conservative leader indicated she would consider introducing identity cards to tackle illegal migration, according to The Telegraph.

The Labour government is currently considering issuing a mandatory verifiable digital identity credential to every adult in the country called the BritCard. Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer has reportedly ordered a “comprehensive and expansive look” at the role technology can play in government, including digital ID.

The issue has been largely driven by former PM Tony Blair and his Institute for Global Change.

Blair’s Labour government introduced mandatory ID cards in 2009. After winning the elections, however, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition repealed the law governing the ID scheme, dubbing the project “wasteful, bureaucratic and intrusive.”

Fintech and digital security experts join lawmakers in support

Meanwhile, other Labour politicians, as well as digital identity and security experts, are also trying to influence the UK’s digital ID debate.

Senior Scottish Labour MP Gregor Poynton said last Friday that ID would help Scots gain faster access to the NHS and lead to “less fraud” at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and “a tax system that actually works.”

“The new eVisa system already lets employers, landlords and public services quickly check someone’s ID and immigration status. It uses secure facial recognition and gives full info on a person’s visa rights,” Poynton says in a letter published by The Daily Record.

“A secure digital identity is the key to fixing our broken immigration system and speeding up the public services we all use,” he adds.

David Birch, digital payments consultant and advisor to digital identity verification service OneID, attempts to dispel confusion about the difference between ID cards and digital identity. The UK needs a “sensible” national discussion on digital identity, instead of the “old tropes about identity cards” repeated by the media, he says.

The digital identity infrastructure proposed by the likes of Tony Blair is not “digital ID cards” but a “secure, privacy-preserving digital identity for citizens.” Digital ID users, for instance, do not have to reveal who they are to prove that they are old enough to look at pornography or rent an e-scooter.

“We have all of the technologies that we need to build the new kind of digital identity that we need for the 21st century — zero-knowledge proofs, verifiable credentials, strong authentication — and now we need to put them to work to deliver not a National Identity Scheme (NIS) as previously envisaged but a National Entitlement Scheme (NES),” he says.

This can be achieved with protocols for requesting and presenting verifiable credentials, such as Open ID for Verifiable Presentations 9OID4VP, currently used within European Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet pilots and the California DMV’s mDL login service, Birch writes for Forbes.

Another often repeated criticism of the country’s proposed digital ID system is the government’s poor track record in introducing large-scale identity-related IT systems. Successful examples such as Estonia, however, could serve as a model for the UK, according to Sir Edward Lucas, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and former senior editor at The Economist.

The UK already has many of the functionalities that Estonia’s digital ID system offers, albeit through various separate systems. Moving towards a more integrated and user-controlled digital identity system, similar to Estonia’s, could be beneficial for the country, he writes in an opinion article for The Times.

Article Topics

border security  |  BritCard  |  David Birch  |  digital ID  |  Scotland  |  Tony Blair Institute  |  UK  |  UK digital ID