With almost three million folks – to date – signing a web based petition in opposition to the introduction of “digital ID playing cards”, the federal government is already combating to reclaim the initiative after prime minister Keir Starmer’s botched announcement of plans for a compulsory nationwide digital id scheme.
Civil service officers final week tried to quell the second uproar of the yr from non-public sector digital ID app suppliers in a behind-closed-doors assembly, whereas this week (Monday 13 October) new know-how secretary Liz Kendall tried to face down MPs from all events in a Home of Commons debate as they expressed their issues and protestations on the plans.
Kendall was right when she instructed MPs: “There may be lots of misinformation on the market about this proposal.” However she didn’t acknowledge that any misinformation was largely a results of the federal government’s poor communication across the unique announcement.
As fintech trade physique Innovate Finance – a supporter of digital id – put it: “The response, frankly, has been to concentrate on the worst-case situation – ‘obligatory digital ID’ is being framed as an erosion of civil liberties, a gateway to mass surveillance, and a device of digital exclusion. It’s all worry and no finesse.”
Based mostly on discussions with trade insiders, nevertheless, it could the truth is be the case that Starmer’s obligatory nationwide digital ID scheme will show to be neither obligatory nor nationwide.
What, precisely, shall be obligatory?
Starmer’s announcement appeared clear: it will likely be obligatory for anybody in search of a job within the UK to show their proper to work utilizing a authorities digital id app on their smartphone – with restricted exemptions for these unable to take action.
Nonetheless, the language used within the Commons by Kendall was subtly completely different. She talked about “making ID checks each obligatory and digital for all employers”. Her speech tried to concentrate on the broader advantages of digital id, citing the necessity to modernise public companies and make them simpler to entry in a digital age.
Years from now, having your ID in your cellphone will really feel like second nature, placing extra energy immediately into folks’s palms and giving them extra management over how they work together with authorities companies. That’s price striving for Liz Kendall, know-how secretary
“Years from now, after we look again, I imagine that having your ID in your cellphone will really feel like second nature, placing extra energy immediately into folks’s palms and giving them extra management over how they work together with authorities and the entire vary of companies. That’s one thing price striving for,” she mentioned.
As shadow know-how secretary Julia Lopez identified, the earlier Conservative authorities had already launched obligatory right-to-work checks for employers and launched a mechanism whereby a digital id app can be utilized, voluntarily, to show a person’s proper to work within the UK. Most UK residents can have needed to show their proper to work (RTW) utilizing bodily paperwork corresponding to a passport.
Any apps used as a part of RTW checks must be accepted via the government-backed Digital Identification and Attributes Belief Framework (DIATF), which was given a statutory foundation via the Knowledge (Use & Entry) Act (DUA), which acquired Royal Assent in June.
Run by the Workplace for Digital Identities and Attributes (OfDIA), almost 50 third-party id service suppliers (IDSPs) have acquired approval underneath DIATF for his or her apps for use for RTW and different statutory authorities checks, corresponding to age verification or registering as an organization director.
Kendall confirmed to MPs that the federal government will carry laws throughout this Parliament – so, earlier than 2029 – for “making ID checks obligatory and digital”. She mentioned there won’t be a central database of digital identities, and there shall be no sanction or penalty for folks if they don’t have a digital ID – just for employers that don’t conduct RTW checks.
The one authorized change the federal government has proposed to date is that RTW checks should be carried out digitally. There shall be a authorities digital id app that individuals can use to digitally show their proper to work, however the query stays: will they be compelled to make use of the federal government app, or will any app from a DIATF-approved IDSP be acceptable?
What are officers saying in non-public?
Final week, officers from the Division for Science, Innovation and Know-how (DSIT) and OfDIA met with trade representatives in a second try this yr to quell fears that the federal government is trying to squeeze non-public sector suppliers out of the digital id market – regardless of years of funding in constructing third-party apps.
The primary try got here after the announcement of the Gov.uk Pockets and its proposed use for age verification – for instance, when shopping for alcohol or accessing age-restricted on-line companies. Many IDSPs specialize in age verification and have spent thousands and thousands of kilos growing, testing and proving their functionality to find out somebody’s age utilizing facial verification via a smartphone app.
Then know-how secretary Peter Kyle was compelled to fulfill with suppliers in Could to guarantee them the federal government had no intention of muscling in – solely that the federal government desires to play a task and it might be unusual to not supply its personal app. Kyle’s reassurances had been warmly acquired, and provider executives left the assembly assured that authorities and trade can be working hand-in-hand going ahead.
So, when Starmer introduced that the federal government can be additional treading on the IDSPs’ turf, there was comprehensible outrage.
On the assembly final week, civil service officers outlined how Starmer’s plans can be delivered to fruition.
IDSPs had been instructed that OfDIA chief govt Hannah Rutter can be transferring into a brand new position, main growth of the coverage and overseeing a session deliberate for early 2026. They heard that Rutter would get replaced at OfDIA by John Peart, who’s seen by suppliers as supportive of the non-public sector’s position. When requested by Pc Weekly, DSIT wouldn’t affirm or deny the appointments.
The session course of – calling for, and responding to, submissions – is prone to take a few yr. Draft laws would then be put earlier than Parliament in 2027, with the brand new authorities digital ID scheme prone to be in place by mid-2028, a few yr earlier than the subsequent normal election.
The legislative course of won’t be straightforward. As David Crack, chair of trade physique the Affiliation of Digital Verification Professionals, instructed Pc Weekly, many Labour MPs are against the idea of obligatory digital id, opposition events are lining up in opposition to it, and since the coverage was not included in Labour’s manifesto, the Home of Lords could discover it constitutionally acceptable to delay and even deny its approval. If thousands and thousands of voters are in opposition to the proposals too, it’s not a coverage prone to be enacted in a normal election yr.
“There’s a plan – for a plan for a nationwide ID scheme – however not an [actual] plan. Realpolitik will prevail,” mentioned Crack.
Through the assembly with IDSPs, DSIT officers reiterated that measures launched by the DUA Act will nonetheless be applied.
Considerably, this consists of the launch of an “data gateway” which is able to permit IDSPs to entry government-held information as a part of the method of confirming folks’s identities digitally – for instance, passport or driving licence checks – enormously increasing the vary of public information that non-government apps can use as credentials to show that app customers are who they are saying they’re.
Effectively earlier than the doubtless launch of a authorities digital ID scheme in 2028, subsequently, there’ll already be all kinds of digital id apps and companies available on the market and already in use by folks selecting voluntarily to show their proper to work digitally.
If use of these apps numbers within the thousands and thousands by 2028, will laws actually power them to maneuver to a government-developed app as an alternative?
Crack mentioned DSIT officers instructed suppliers they’re open to concepts on learn how to implement obligatory digital RTW checks. “Be aware, obligatory RTW checks, however not essentially a compulsory digital ID scheme,” he mentioned. Crack believes that “authorities is listening”.
Others within the trade are much less satisfied. “The reality is out – a affirmation that the federal government made a coverage choice to go forward and do that stuff themselves. We’re instructed the DUA Act shall be continued, however my sense is that they see the non-public sector as interim or peripheral,” mentioned one provider govt, who requested to stay nameless.
Nonetheless, stakeholders throughout the digital id sector agree on two issues.
First, that Starmer’s announcement has propelled digital id into a subject for nationwide debate – one thing even probably the most apprehensive suppliers have welcomed.
And second, that the way of Starmer’s announcement – linking digital ID to tackling unlawful immigration – means the general public will must be educated on what digital id actually means.
Dispelling the myths
With almost three million signatories, the petition in opposition to the federal government proposal is likely one of the largest such on-line protests, however the assertion folks signal as much as help says, “We demand that the UK authorities instantly commits to not introducing a digital ID card”.
The federal government has failed to ascertain to the general public that digital id isn’t an try at “ID playing cards by stealth” – and the extremely publicised help for the coverage from the Tony Blair Institute has not helped to dispel such issues, given Blair was the prime minister who tried to introduce bodily ID playing cards throughout the 2000s.
Moreover, critics have lined as much as assault the usage of a centralised authorities database – however Kendall confirmed there isn’t any such plan, there by no means was, and as anyone accustomed to how digital id works would clarify, the know-how depends on the safe sharing of credentials, not giant quantities of non-public information or referencing an id database.
For instance, an age verification app merely confirms that the holder is over 18 when shopping for alcohol. It shares a digital credential saying “sure” when requested, “Is that this particular person over 18?” – the app doesn’t must determine the particular person to the retailer in any means.
Lurid newspaper headlines have warned of US tech corporations getting their palms on UK residents’ private information, with explicit fears over the involvement of Palantir, the controversial information integration provider that works carefully with US army and intelligence companies, in addition to the NHS. One MP within the Commons debate warned of “writing Fujitsu a clean cheque” – a reference to the shamed IT companies provider that developed the Horizon system on the coronary heart of the Publish Workplace scandal.
Nonetheless, Kendall confirmed that the federal government app shall be developed in-house, by the Authorities Digital Service – there are not any plans to award a contract to a single provider to develop the digital ID software program from scratch.
The software program shall be a continuation of current developments – notably, Gov.uk One Login, the digital id system that may develop into the usual approach to log in to on-line public companies and is already in use by many authorities web sites.
It’s doubtless that the digital ID system will use the Gov.uk Pockets to retailer digital credentials, supplied by the federal government, that show the holder is who they are saying they’re and that they’ve the proper to work within the UK – a lot the identical as the prevailing non-public sector apps which can be used for a similar function right this moment.
By the point any laws is handed, the quantity of additional growth wanted for One Login and the digital pockets is prone to be comparatively minimal – and definitely not require an enormous new software program growth undertaking.
These plans will not be with out dangers – Pc Weekly revealed earlier this yr that the Nationwide Cyber Safety Centre has, previously, raised severe safety issues over One Login, and {that a} safety train carried out by an exterior consultancy in March confirmed that One Login could possibly be hacked with out being detected. One Login has additionally misplaced its DIATF approval.
DSIT will must be much more clear about the way it has solved these issues earlier than public belief within the system will be established.
Trade commerce affiliation TechUK has referred to as on the federal government to assist tackle the issues its announcement has provoked, and to work collectively to clarify the advantages that digital id can supply the general public, citing the “uncertainty for residents and the non-public sector alike” that got here because of Starmer’s announcement.
[Keir Starmer’s announcement] inappropriately positions digital ID as a silver bullet for a multifaceted and nuanced difficulty, somewhat than specializing in the advantages that digital ID can truly ship, which means its broader advantages are at the moment lacking from the present political narrative TechUK report
“The announcement primarily centred on immigration enforcement, with authorities linking digital ID to the discount of unlawful working – and with out acknowledgement that digital ID options, supplied underneath the DIATF, had been already getting used for this function,” mentioned TechUK, in a brand new report, Digital ID & the UK: Empowering residents, enabling progress.
“It inappropriately positions digital ID as a silver bullet for a multifaceted and nuanced difficulty, somewhat than specializing in the advantages that digital ID can truly ship, which means its broader advantages are at the moment lacking from the present political narrative.”
The report added: “Authorities should work alongside the digital ID sector, civil society, residents, and different key stakeholders to construct public belief, help innovation, and drive adoption. Certainly, the digital ID sector is ready for a sustained interval of engagement, the place long-term choices on digital ID infrastructure, governance, and market design will must be rigorously thought of. Clearer communication round future plans is crucial for residents and the digital ID sector alike.”
There’s a path that Starmer and his authorities might comply with, to again away from a badly acquired proposal and look like listening to public issues, which might promote digital id because the social and financial profit it has proved to be in quite a few different nations.
It will contain rescinding plans for a “nationwide, obligatory” scheme, in favour of providing the general public a large selection of digital ID apps – each non-public sector and government-developed – that may allow a compulsory digital right-to-work verify to be applied nationwide. Who is aware of, perhaps it would even have an effect on immigration?
However trade, the general public and sceptical MPs alike can solely wait and see whether or not Starmer is politically savvy sufficient to understand the chance to show a foul proposal into good coverage.
