MPs avoid substantive debate on UK digital ID to flog hobby horses at committee hearing

The UK’s first parliamentary debate on national digital identity presented the irony of a roomful of people representing a whole country’s population avoiding each other’s statements and questions to accuse each other of not listening. The Petitions Committee debate was mostly a waste of time, unfortunately but perhaps inevitably given the adversarial partisan format, the paucity of information about the government’s intentions and the complexities that digital ID entails.

Most of the comments amounted to political posturing and reflected little or no understanding of what is being proposed by members of parliament.

Given the lack of consistent and detailed vision shared by the government, there is a fixed limit to how much anyone can know about it. That limit did not prevent opposition members from making a series of claims about how it will work, sometimes directly contradicting the few specifics so far on offer.

The petition launched immediately after Prime Minister Kier Starmer announced his plan, or at least some sort of vague intention, to introduce mandatory national digital identity to the UK, received 2.9 million signatures. This makes it, as was breathlessly repeated ad nauseum, the fourth most-signed e-petition in their brief history.

Opposition members repeatedly referenced the OBR’s estimate that the system will cost 1.8 billion pounds, which the government has already rejected.

The concerns

Opposition MPs repeatedly made the point that a mandatory identification document fundamentally changes the nature of the UK from one governed by common law to a “permissions-based society,” in the words of

The policy did not appear in the “Manifesto” released by Labour during the election campaign, and therefore the government has no mandate to introduce a required national digital ID, MPs said frequently.

Between these two uncomfortable points, a vital element of public consent for the government’s policy is absent, according to several lawmakers.

No ‘common factual base,’ no debate

Labour MP Jake Richards noted toward the middle of the hearing that “We cannot have a debate about digital ID without beginning from a common factual base.”

What preceded and followed was mostly a series of unsupported claims and repeated opinions.

MPs noted that “the devil is in the details” and that those details are not yet available, but also that the plan revolves around an unsecure “an enormous, centralized database of everyone’s information” that will cost £1.8 billion or more, provide “a master key to every part of a citizen’s life” and make all UK residents nameless numbers like Patrick McGoohan in “The Prisoner.”

Labour MP Allison Gardner, who is chair of the Digital Identity All-Party Parliamentary Group,  attributed the drop in public support to “scaremongering,” including from the party that enacted voter ID when it was in power.

The Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework and the dozens of technology providers already certified for digital identity services against the DIATF merited a single mention over the course of the three hours.

Ultimately, opposition MPS pushed for the consultancy to at least hold open the option to abandon the plan altogether.

If centralization is not part of the plan, if the OBR estimate is wrong and if a physical alternative is available, then many of the points made by the opposition are irrelevant. If the digital ID does not stop small boats, if it does not tightly secure people’s personal information and adds to the country’s fiscal woes, many of the government’s points are irrelevant.

All can be true at the same time.

Article Topics

BritCard  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  GOV.UK Wallet  |  UK digital ID