UK digital ID plan gets a price tag at last – £1.8B The UK government has finally put a £1.8 billion price tag on its digital ID plans – days after the minister responsible refused to name a figure. Last week, Ian Murray defended the government's decision not to publish the budgeted costs of its proposal to build digital IDs for every citizen. He told MPs the cost "would be …
Like too many politicians nowadays, Murray doesn't seem to understand how Government works in a democracy.
If they had the sense to drop this insane scheme, it wouldn't cost a penny, but no doubt they will spend a vast amount of taxpayers money on advancing the plan and will very probably end up abandoning it in the end - lots of money spent for nothing at the end of it. Seems to be the usual procedure for Governments nowadays.
Probably will be worse than that—the parts that had some potential benefit will be jettisoned; the components that even as part of the whole had no discernible benefit and likely detrimental, will be vehemently retained with massively greater cost and harm in the absence of unretained parts.
You will get the worst of all possible worlds.
I've met Murray briefly.
Actually seemed a reasonable, pretty switched on guy.
My father knew him a lot better and liked him, he normally hated all politicians, especially Labour and the SNP.
Of course as a minister he has to hold his nose and the govt. line at the same time but that's the price you pay if you want to sit at the big table on the extra ministerial salary.
I think most MP's have their hypocrisy detectors and embarrassment factor invisibly removed the moment they walk through the doors of parliament, or maybe it happens when they put the papers in to stand for election.
He was the only decent alternative to the pool of political pond life that we get to vote for round here. Unfortunaelty he is in the Labour party, a bunch of second rate chancers that are going to take this country down with them.
Digital ID will be a disaster. Just waiting for the first data breach, when some shady scroats from Russia or Iran run off with all our personal data.
Try reading Isabel Hardman's book 'Why we get the wrong politicians' before judging them too harshly. Being an MP is a difficult job, whatever your political affiliation.
In essence, the stated reason for digital identification cards is to help control illegal working by immigrants (legal and illegal) and therefore deter illegal immigration. Whether that is the only reason is, of course, open to debate. But illegal immigration and migration are such complicated issues (would you want to live in Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, Iran etc?) that digital IDs is not going to solve the problem on its own.
"In essence, the stated reason for digital identification cards is to help control illegal working by immigrants (legal and illegal) and therefore deter illegal immigration. "
This is a lie that only the stupidest pond life could believe. How many illegal immigrants do you think are going to say "It's not safe to the channel now. They have Starmercards."?
"digital IDs is not going to solve the problem"
They're not going to solve any problem. Starmercards are going to create lots of new, avoidable and unnecessary problems: pervasive mass surveillance of everyone, devastating harms when the database gets compromised, shutdown of everything when the database fails or the cloud provider fucks up, everyone's loss of privacy, etc, etc.
Since there already is an ID sceme for recent immigrants to prove they have the right to work, this ID card is aimed at the rest of us. If it has any impact on immigration, I would imagine it would be more to bolster the black market and the modern slavery sector of employment, and probably won't have any effect on emotorbike-riding food delivery people.
I thought the incompetent vs competent chancer, which is worse? Question had been comprehensively answered by the Liz Truss vs Rishi Sunak pm thing few years ago.
Rishi? He managed way more damage to the economy by appearing competent enough, to enough people for a long enough period of time.
Or Liz? Although she did very little damage directly, the trouble is she showed that if you are incredibly incompetent you should avoid splurging your incompetence up the wall all in one go. As a result, the next incredibly incompetent PM (and there are several prospects on the horizon) might be that bit more dangerous if they can learn some basic lessons from her time.
"Just waiting for the first data breach"
Interestingly, the Government use Estonia as the standard for Digital ID. Estonia hasn't had their ID hacked (yet) but there was a security breach (certificates) in 2017, and the system was taken offline by a DDoS recently (think it was 2022).
There's also been reports of Digital ID's failing and locking people out of accounts, including banking, so a data breach doesn't look to be the thing we should really worry about.
At least with paper (or plastic) you have the manual backup. No need for power, either...
Welfare benefits are a safety net for people with real problems, and who need help. They are not supposed to be for the increasing number of people who are just having a bad day, and want somebody else (i.e. "the guvmint") to blame for it, and fix it. Those are the people who are generating the "unsustainable cost" through their self-diagnosed ailments, not the genuinely disabled.
Alright, how's about a real-world example for you: me. Diagnosed five years ago as autistic, sub-type high functioning, no intellectual disability. I have the greatest of difficulty ion reading peoples' body language, plus a few other social things simply don't register in my brain. Social status-seeking? Nope, don't do that or really understand it either.
What do I get from the Government for this condition? Sweet bugger all, that's what.
The NHS mental health units won't touch autism diagnosis unless it is a child (but they do work on Sundays to phone you to tell you that). It cost me the best part of £900 for a private diagnosis. It gets me legal protection at work and that's about the lot, really. A life of leisure on benefits? Hah, chance'd be a fine thing, I am way too capable to ever get a sniff of that; don't even qualify for blue badge car parking, have to pay for my own prescriptions too.
I'm honest, that's my problem. Ask me a question and you get an honest answer even to my net detriment, and honesty in response does not a PIP claimant make.
A PIP claimant doesn't stop being a PIP claimant through honesty.
The criteria are pretty clearly* defined and the aim is to help cover the additional costs incurred because of a disability.
It's easy to see some of those costs - a wheelchair is expensive, and transport costs increase when you can't physically walk/push into town. It's less easy to see some of the other costs - additional heating for various conditions, additional electricity for medical equipment.
The NHS really does need alot more cash for mental health, but I'm not clear why you consider that you'd benefit from blue badge parking?
* whether they are correctly defined is a different question
Do you know what benefits one can get from self-assessing? The square root of fuck all.
Take your dangerous ignorance and replace it with some actual knowledge and intelligence. Until then, do us all the benefit of staying quiet, rather than spouting the sort of drivel the Daily Heil would be proud of (retraction next Wednesday in grey small print at the bottom of p47 underneath a full-page ad for incontinence pants).
How about, instead of attacking the genuinely disabled and making their lives even harder than they are already, how about they go after the much larger component of welfare which is all the people who've never worked because they know they can get benefits for doing bugger all. That'll save many 10s of billions overnight, but the government is too spineless to make it happen.
Such benefits should be a privilege for those who've paid into the system, to support them if things go wrong.
Never worked and not disabled? No benefits for you.
Made poor life choices and now you can't get a job you want? Tough shit. You were warned about your poor life choices at school. If you went. If you didn't, well, there you are with another poor life choice that the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer for.
Don't want to a job that's "beneath you" like care? Too bad. Care sector is crying out for workers and they'll provide all the training needed. You basically just need to turn up (yes ok and pass the background checks, which might be hard for some, but again... poor life choices). My wife spent years working as a carer so I know how tough it can be, but it's still work. They should pay better, because it is really a profession that needs skills (interpersonal, understanding of regs, safety, first aid etc.). Not an unskilled profession at all.
I'm complaining about people who are too lazy to work, have never worked, made lift choices that put themselves in their situation, yet expect taxpayer handouts.
Don't really care about the super-rich since they tend to not be the ones claiming benefits.
Make it simple. You want benefits, do some work first. Don't just drop out of school and expect the state to cover your arse.
If the benefits bill is genuinely unsustainable, as we're being told it is by all sides, tie entitlement to how long a person has worked. Things can't continue as they are.
How about, rather than attacking any of those who are in a bad enough situation to need to claim benefits to survive, including the actually vanishingly small number of fraudulent claimants, for whom the cost of detecting and prosecuting them usually outweighs the scale of their fraud, we go after the growing number of extremely wealthy individuals, who not only find ways to not pay their way, but who are actively sucking resources out of our economy? You know, the real scroungers who have never worked a minute in their lives, and who do it as such a scale that they literally live in buildings that it would be perfectly fair to refer to as palaces.
Absolutely go after them too, but remember that wealthy individuals usually already pay a huge amount of tax. Do you think going after the ones who don't will really move the needle much?
Besides this isn't a debate about whether people who live off trust funds are worthless layabouts (arguably some are, some are not, I don't know any so can't assess either way). This is a debate about bringing down the benefits bill for the taxpayer. Maligning people who don't claim benefits is irrelevant.
It would be useful if the OBR published how much similar or related schemes cost in other countries. Many European countries have ID cards and/or apps so it would interesting to see how much they cost to implement and run compared to what's being proposed here. I know that the politicians would play the "but ours is different, better, etc?" game but if the UK proposal is ten times the cost of, say, Sweden or Italy, then it would prompt some interesting questions.
But that's the key to the whole thing.
Many European countries have, to varying extents, more centralised systems of identity and it is quite common for there to be a legal requirement to carry an official ID card. Work is in progress to establish an EU Digital Identity Wallet which will probably start off with digital driving licences, but create a framework for various forms of digital ID for both public and private use across the EU. The aim is to reduce the cost of multiple, incompatible systems and the reliance on paper documents.
On the other hand, the UK is rollling out a system allegedly for the sole purpose of proving the right to work (though it may have other, "voluntary" uses). The thing is, there is already a digital system in place to verify the right to work of most non-UK citizens (the employer gets a "share code" in the same way you can check a driving licence or a Power of Attorney) and so this is essentially a gimmick. It will also require people who already have proof of British or Irish nationality to apply for (and presumably regularly renew) right-to-work ID while still requiring the paper documentation (such as birth certificate or passport) to get the digital ID.
In the former case, the goal is to save money (of course, it ultimately may not do so, but that's the nature of IT projects...) while in the latter case the goal is to add complexity to an existing system for the sake of a few "hostile environment" headlines. Having got the headlines, the smart thing would presumably be to quietly shelve the project.
Of course, one of the problems with the current system is all the exceptions - people who are entitled to work but don't have a biometric residece card or arrived from the EU before a post-Brexit cutoff date or have the right to work in certain occupations but not others. Currently, employers have to take the risk they've correctly interpreted the rules. If they go ahead, the government is going to be stuck with the task of interpreting its own rules, which is where you can expect the costs to start to over-run.
It would cost far, far more. Two reasons:
1) The scope is far wider, at least by an order of magnitude.
2) Compulsory, which means the £94.50 every 9 years has to come out of general taxation.
The cost of printing is basically irrelevant, it's the cost of everything else.
If we assumed that passport application fees cover the full cost (they don't), and knock off £4.50 for printing, then it's a minimum cost of £10×70M = £700 million per year.
In reality it's higher, because passports are subsidised from general taxation. So the OBR estimate is not far off the minimum, if it goes well.
The cost of printing is basically irrelevant, it's the cost of everything else.If we assumed that passport application fees cover the full cost (they don't), and knock off £4.50 for printing, then it's a minimum cost of £10×70M = £700 million per year.
I'm pretty sure part of the cost of a UK passport was due to the cost being increased to pay for the last Labour attempt at imposing ID Cards. That got scrapped, but the cost of a passport wasn't reduced.
Processing a passport should hopefully be cheap as mainly online these days (bar posting off your old passport & receiving new one - which does not even use recorded delivery or similar, just normal post FFS! a "most wanted" ID fraud document just floating through the postal system)
.. back in the day needed some "worthies" countersigning your photo as being you when you renewed, none of that these days
Nope when I last renewed my passport a couple of years back, the replacement was sent by courier and had to signed for by the addressee. If you weren’t in then it was taken back to the office.
Both the old and new came back in the same package.
When I sent the old one in then I used special delivery - why wouldn’t you?
What does the Venn diagram look like for people who don't want a passport but would want a digital ID card? I'm picturing two circles touching at the very slightest points.
There are 51.6 million British passport holders in the UK. Out of under 70 million people in the country. So we'd be printing 51.6 million cards for people who already have at least one passport.
And passports already have wireless functionality. And machine-readable text. And a format that's not just UK-compatible but also able to work with foreign governments' documents.
And there's a whole global industry of companies making software to read and verify and test and prove software and hardware for passports.
There are criminal networks already trying to forge passports around the world, and huge funds in the security space being spent preventing that. The criminal networks would also clone the digital ID cards, so that security effort would need to be replicated for a separate physical card.
There is no way that a physical card would be simpler or even bordering on cost effective versus using Passports. It needs more than twice as many documents producing, the duplication of effort and infrastructure is colossal, whole new regulatory frameworks need to be created, it loses the ability to also work with foreign nationals who are in the country, and the practical benefit is zero.
Doing a bit of poking around in the government's own data, as of September 2025, there are approx 42.7m active full, driving licences (https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/d0be1ed2-9907-4ec4-b552-c048f6aec16a/driving-licence-data). There are also 10.4 million provisionals.
According to (https://www.ons.gov.uk/datasets/TS013/editions/2021/versions/3) there are around 45.7m passport holders, as of 2023.
The UK Population estimate according to ONS is 69.5m (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/provisionalpopulationestimatefortheuk/latest).
The 2024 population data suggests around 21.4% of the population under 17 (so aren't able to get a provisional licence, but may have a passport) - around 13m (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2024#age-structure-of-the-population), and there's no reason the believe the 2025 proportion is much bigger.
There are significant overlaps here in many of these sets, so the question of who exactly doesn't have any form of ID at this point is probably not a silly one to ask. How many of these people exist? There will be a significant number, but the next question to ask then is:will having a digital ID be any better for them particularly?
I can see the case for a universal identifier to be able to join some data across these cases for government services, but authorisation across domains still bothers me, along with the obvious possibly of breaches, and possible overreach and feature creep, as well as other concerns about how requests for ID may be used or deployed in future.
Eighteen years ago it was estimated that there were at least 77m people in the country (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/city-eye-facts-on-a-plate-our-population-is-at-least-77-million-5328454.html), so take those ONS figures with a large heap of salt.
"A simple physical card that works with a card reader,......"
The trouble with any form of mandatory identification, whether it be digital or a physical card is that a mandatory ID is something that has never been required within the UK, and over the years has become directly associated with extremist totalitarian dictatorships in the British collective mind. Perhaps this will change with the current younger generations, but for now it still remains a very strong association for anyone whose memory goes back to before the fall of Eastern European communism.
I lived in Italy for a while in the 80s and remember feeling the same thing when told that I had to carry ID at all times - either my passport or get an ID card and it could be demanded at any time for any reason by any of the various types of police. It certainly felt (for a while) like a police state, although nothing ever happened in practice. When I got my Italian ID card (much easier than lugging the UK passport around) they sent a policeman to check my flat to make sure I really lived there. He checked the wardrobe to see if the clothes looked like they fitted me and asked me to play a couple of chords on the guitar that was leaning against the couch. They took identity pretty seriously and when I returned to the UK I found it a bit disconcerting that all I needed to prove my identity to open a bank account or get HP was a recent gas or phone bill, which proved difficult because I was renting a room in a mate's house.
Opening a bank account in someone else's name in the UK is really easy. Not that I would stoop so low, you understand, but fraudsters have done so in my actual name ("Eclectic Man" is, in fact, not my real name, my parents were eccentric, not mad), with, to my certain knowledge, Barclays, HSBC, TSB, Yorkshire Building Society, Family building Society, and the Skipton Building Society and with Hargreaves Landsdown, the share management company. They have used them to steal over £120,000 from me.
So, personally, ID cards, if done securely and well, sound pretty good to me.
Except this is going to be an over-ambitious, all-pervasive UK government IT scheme that'll be outsourced to some combination of Crapita, Fushitsu, Palantir and Bangalore sweatshops*. That doesn't sound anything like pretty good to me - or anyone else who has an IQ that's higher than plankton.
Has our collective memory already forgotten about the Horizon, Test&Trace, Universal Credit, etc fuckups?
"much easier than lugging the UK passport around"
Do you carry yours within a suitcase or rolled up rug?? A UK Passport is about the same size as most phones, but much thinner. I don't know how we manage to lug those cumbersome phones around with us.
When it becomes a standard card, people will put them in their folding-wallet type phone cases (mostly women due to not having wallets and proper pockets to put them in), and lose them on a yearly basis.
A UK Passport in the 80s was bigger than today and had a hard cover with sharp corners. It didn't fit in a denim jacket pocket (my standard non-work everyday wear in those days). I carried it in my jeans back pocket before I got an ID card and it was very tatty as a result. The problem with carrying today's UK passport on a regular basis is that the check-in and gate staff are very twitchy about any damage whatsoever to a passoport and have been known to deny boarding for very minor damage.
You can renew both driving license and passport online now. And you have to do it every ten years, and when I first renewed each they required a new photo to capture any visible changes.
However, when I last did both, each renewal said "oh, we already have your photo on $OTHERID, we will automatically use that". So my driving license used my passport photo 'cos it was less than ten years since it was renewed, and my passport now uses my driving license photo 'cos it is less than ten years since it was renewed, and now my driving license now uses that passport photo because it's less than ten years since it was renewed.... all omitting to notice the original photo is from 2008.
> I lived in Italy for a while in the 80s and remember feeling the same thing when told
> that I had to carry ID at all times - either my passport or get an ID card and it could be
> demanded at any time for any reason by any of the various types of police.
When I lived in Germany people said I had to carry my passport on me at all times - that's not true. However if the police there had ever stopped me and needed to determine my identity then they had legal powers to, for example, take me to my apartment to retrieve my passport or to detain me until my identity could be determined.
Plenty of other countries implemented ID without becoming totalitarian. Plenty of things were never required here. Until they were required. In fact, across the broad arc of human history, lots of things were considered tradition until they weren't. Drowning people accused of witchcraft, for example. I understand it is known as progress.
While I agree with you, pretty well everyone has a national insurance number already. I'm still waiting on a decent use case for ID cards to stop illegal working where national insurance numbers don't. Clearly there's plenty of people working in the black market, and so plenty of scope to abuse ID cards in just the exact same way as NI numbers now.
Unless we're doing the full Ex-commie Eastern block thing of "Papers please!", in which case its hard to know how any photo ID wouldn't work just as well.
I'm deeply suspicious that its just another labour party attempt at controlling people, again.
Your passport really only works at the border
But I thought that the digital ID was only needed when you wanted to start a new job. What you are admitting is that digital ID is going to be used for far, far more than we are currently told.
not everyone has a passport or wants a passport.
But many people have a driving license. OK: many is not all but between passports & driving license you cover most people.
Oh: you do not need a car or have passed the test to have a driving license - you have to have one to be able to take driving lessons.
But I thought that the digital ID was only needed when you wanted to start a new job. What you are admitting is that digital ID is going to be used for far, far more than we are currently told.
But we are being told, at least in very vague terms-
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said they would also "offer ordinary citizens countless benefits, like being able to prove your identity to access key services swiftly."
Which is much like Labour's last attempt at imposing ID Cards. Use creeping compulsion so that ID Cards are needed where they weren't needed before. Like, I dunno.. validating your online connection so that we don't need to go through pesky Online Safety Act age verification. Or ensuring that all online communications, messages, VoIP calls etc are automagically signed with your Digital ID so that calling people muppets, or asking about 'models' with petrol bombs can be swiftly punished. Online anonymity will be a thing of the past, so obey, citizen..
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"Oh: you do not need a car or have passed the test to have a driving license - you have to have one to be able to take driving lessons"
I think you will find that (in the UK) where a driving licence is accepted as a form of identification, it specifies "a full UK driving licence".
As BartyFartsLast has pointed out, a provisional licence doesn't count, so you do need to have passed a test ;)
"A simple physical card that works with a card reader, like a bank card, would be far simpler and cheaper to roll out."
It's going to be installed on your smartphone. If you don't have one you'll have to buy one and then have HMG compulsorily install on it some with unknown limits of functionality.
It doesn't work like that.
Imagine telling HMRC you don't have the necessary software to complete their imminent mandatory income submissions for landlords.
You'll very soon have a fine, and if you refuse to pay, be in front of a judge.
Of course, they'll say it's voluntary - in the sense you don't have to be a landlord...
I have been working since 2008. Every job I've gone in to I have shown my passport and I have shown my NI.
It's a weird feeling to be in when you're told that your passport alone isn't good enough to prove who you are in the country you live in, but is perfectly fine when I want to go abroad to 190+ other countries?
Your NI number is in no way useful as a form of ID due to the way the NI system works (or doesn't work, depending on your point of view).
There are large quantities of NI numbers attached to no-one, others attached to more than one person, people attached to more than one NI number. The system is beyond redemption so far as being a formal, effective general purpose ID is concerned, but it more or less functions for the purpose it fulfils---not an 'ID Card'.
@Jason Bloomberg
It was obvious Starmer gang were right-wing & authoritarian - look at their attacks / purges of anyone vaguely left wing, coupled with the anti Semitic scam against Corbyn*
You'll just have to do what I do most elections, look at the candidates on offer, see they are all a waste of space & so spoil the ballot paper.
* Corbyn has many, many flaws but being anti Semitic is not one of them (not being in favour of Israeli genocide is not anti Semitic)
You have not read the rules of the game.
ANY criticism of Israel or the Israeli States actions is by definition 'Anti-Semitic' !!!
This applies globally !!!
It isn't about the criticism being FALSE or incorrect in any way ... it is about the fact of making the criticism means you MUST be 'Anti-Semitic'.
I can criticise my Govt or Trump or Putin and it is not automatic that I am 'Anti-<whoever>' BUT make any statement that draws focus on Israel and you are an 'Anti-Semite' of the calibre of Hitler !!!
This method closes ALL debate and frightens ALL people from attempting to highlight what they do not agree with as it often leads to labelling that can cause long lasting harm.
Israel has made many bad decisions in Gaza and other places it does not like BUT can never be criticised !!!
Recently the UN has made less than complimentary pronouncements about Israels actions in, and in relation to, Gaza ... by this fact they are 'Anti-Semitic' !!!
:)
And the existing digital ID system GOV.UK One https://signin.account.gov.uk/sign-in-or-create is almost unusable even though hardly anyone has to use it. Of the 4 people I know who attempted sign-up and identity verification, only 2 have managed it so far. Help pages and telephone support are, of course, unusable or unavailable. And this only needs to be used by a fairly small number of people - less than a million I believe (people who have to file company information and some others).
Imagine what would happen if 60+ million people all had to sign up to the eventual national ID solution over the course of (say) a year?
It was a total pain for my partner who had to do it as a company director* (who ended up completing the process at the Post Office)
* nothing exciting, we are in the sticks & our cul de sac uses septic tank, has an unadopted road so 1 member of each household is director of a company for the cul de sac that each household contributes to & the company then pays for maintenance tasks such as road repairs, septic tank emptying
Yeah, I've been fighting through the system trying to help my ex get her OneLogin validated because all her acceptable ID is in a different name to her HMRC records, and for privacy purposes HMRC are not allowed to say what the mismatch is.
It worked okay for me. I had to verify my identity as a company director.
The identity verification is now a legal requirement.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/verify-your-identity-for-companies-house
I had to use a smartphone app called Gov UK ID Check. It wanted a photo of both sides of my driving licence. It asked, "Is this information correct?" Then I had to hold the phone in front of my face and it flashed colours on the screen.
The only trouble I had was at first, when it asked, "Have you got a passport?" I chose yes and then found it really meant, "Have you got a passport and have you got it with you right now?" I chose No, and then got the option to use a driving licence instead, which I did have with me.
It felt odd knowing that Companies House have now got this stuff about me in electronic form. I suppose I've got used to it now.
I think it's more aimed at tracking what age-restricted websites everyone is visiting (and VPNs will be age-restricted) and the app will track your location.
Obviously the app won't work if you have an after-maket OS with up-to-date security patches, only the ones that pass Google Play store certification that are months behind with their security updates.
… by whoever is awarded the contracts.
The cost will double, triple and then the entire mess will be shelved when Labour are booted out and we end up with a hung parliament out of which an ineffectual government will be formed that will be hamstrung from the get go.
They will reintroduce the idea and it’ll cost another few billion.
I managed to avoid a photocard driving licence until I officially became an old git at age 70. The tattyist bit of paper sufficed until then because no-one ever consulted it. My lovely wife still has a (pristine) paper version which has never seen light of day for 30+ years. However; try not to become old, because you can't even get a bus pass when you don't have a passport or driving licence any more. Funny how you cease to exist when your passport expires (or sooner in EU). Under common law, you used to be able to use any name or many. Not any more, thanks to computers. If your name happens to be something like ภูมิพลอดุลยเดช you can't have a British passport with that on it. Come to think of it, most all the boat people have probably got names written in arabic, so they'll just make up a name in english (or several at random), how is that definitive?
Once Digital ID (DID) is rolled out, the government will appear to realise (but this was always the intention) that it still has no effect in deterring the immigrants from coming over, so they will next rollout a requirement to use DID to purchase food, fuel, NHS, and public transport, etc. In fact any monetary transaction will need to be authenticated with DID. At this point, only immigrants which received a DID upon reception to the UK will be able to eat or travel. For the rest of the UK population to eat etc, we will have to sign up to a DID as well, otherwise we are locked out of our own country.
That's where I see this going.
The whole digital ID process is being pushed by Blair and his cronies who appear to be the major influence on this government.
Personally I think this is partly because Blair is still fuming after his brilliant ID plan got rejected last time around, but more generally it is because there is money to be made and control to be had. Nowadays Mr Blair has some very wealthy backers who would have plenty of ideas for what a more authoritarian regime could do with such an ID system.
I'll do it for less than £1bn. No problem. First step, no consultants. Just tell me what you want. I'll tell you what you can get. The job is done a year early (see "no consultants") and half the price (see "no consultants). And if you don't know what you want, then please do not pass Go.
The first I heard of this was a story about the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change releasing a paper on it, he clearly has some tech-sales people taking him out to dinner again. It failed the first time Tony, get the message.
Starmer is a fool for bringing back Blair and Mandelson. A fool for concentrating effort on everything but what's important to people. We have government by lobbyist and media, but somehow, they are in fact still much better than the Tory conspiracy theorists we had in the last "government".
A lot of EU countries have digital ID and its actually pretty great. In Denmark it works like a single sign on for all the services who might need to know who I am, like the digital post system, my bank account, the health service, and the council. It hasn't been abused or used to spy on anyone and it means I dont need to have half a bunch of accounts and if I change address it cuts down the number of places I need to update. Its also great for security, its more or less impossible for anyone to get into my bank account other than me. If done correctly digital ID makes things a lot easier, and I think if the government does it internally using that team that does the new fancy websites, it has a decent chance of success. That being said if it gets outsourced it will 100% go to shit and I am doubtful the government has the wisdom to keep it internal.
Anyone remember Windrush
Gov: Oh you people have paper documents proving your right to live & work in the UK, send them to us & we'll make an electronic version, it'll be perfectly safe
Ppl: OK here you go
Gov: Oh we lost them, can you prove your right to live & work in the UK ?
Ppl: We sent you the documents
Gov: We have no record of any documents, if you can't prove your right to live here you're going to have to leave
I wonder what the Government will do to UK citizens when the ID records are 'lost'
120 comments in and no-one has pointed out that EU citizens in the UK have already been made to try to live with a online-only digital status.
Michael Gove and others promised that EU citizens already lawfully in the UK would see "no change".
That turned into, apply using a smartphone or you'll be made unlawful and liable to immigration detention and removal.
The vast scale of this massively and disgracefully broken promise is unbelievable.
Recently I met a Polish man who had been in the UK since at least 2010 and he'd got Permanent Residency. He told me he felt "offended" when he discovered that his Permanent Residency card with the signature of the Home Secretary on it had been made invalid.
Now, he and millions of others who came in good faith now have to prove their rights using a flaky smartphone app. It is absolutely astonishing to discover that the Home Office data behind the electronic only system is prone to swapping data between people's records. Like, can you imagine, finding someone else's photo on your record??! It's happened. According to the3million.org.uk, it's happened to the same unfortunate person more than once. Another example: a couple who applied at the same time found his data on her record and vice versa.
Sometimes, the unlucky people who have to endure this get errors like "The system is unavailable" or "We cannot find your record".
The campaign group the3million, who have seen for themselves how troublesome this all is, say that they don't want the same thing done to everyone in the UK.
I have an old friend who is originally from Ireland who lives in London. He is exempt from the madness because of having an Irish passport.
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