Digital ID: Public Consultation
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 18 Mar 2026 · 35 speeches · Official Report
Statement
The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 10 March.
“Today the Government are launching a national conversation on how we will build and use digital ID as the means to access public services digitally on a mobile phone or computer.
Public services are meant to be there at the most important moments of your life: free childcare hours to help your children get a good start in life, getting your passport to go on your first holiday, passing your driving test and getting your first driving licence, asking for help if you lose your job, or receiving your state pension in retirement. But today, as the House knows, it is often too hard for people to get what they need when they need it. The current legacy system of call centres, paperwork and the need for people to tell their story multiple times to different parts of government, with hours on hold and not knowing where they are in the process, is not good enough. I want to change that, and this Government will.
In its place, we will build a truly modern Britain where public services work for the citizen, through new digital public services that come together on the GOV.UK app, so that help is there when people need it most. To do that, government needs to build the foundations for these new modern public services, and that is exactly what this digital ID system is for. It will be free to access for anyone who wishes to use it, and it will be built on three core principles. First, it must be useful. It needs to be easier than the old telephone and paper-based systems. Secondly, it must be secure. People will have more control over what data they share, and we expect nothing less than the level of security protections provided by banks for online banking services. Thirdly, it must be for everyone. We will not leave people behind, and the Government will help those who are less confident with technology or do not have other forms of ID, such as a passport.
With a digital ID, citizens will be able to log in to the GOV.UK app and then, crucially, prove who they are. But unlike an ordinary login, the digital ID will work across different departments and services, bringing those all together in one place in the GOV.UK app, so that the public can access all the services they need in one place. This is different from building one giant government IT system-that is not what we are doing. Services will remain on separate IT systems in their relevant departments, and the NHS app and citizens’ health data will always remain separate, but the GOV.UK app and digital ID will, over time, bring all other public services into one app on mobile phones-the front door to modern public services.
This will not be a new experience for citizens. The public already use these systems every day, from banking to shopping. Other countries are already far ahead of us, from Denmark and Estonia to Australia and India. Britain is having to catch up.
It is an issue of convenience and efficiency, but it is also one of fairness and equality. We all know who the status quo often favours: those with the resources, the headspace, and perhaps the pointy elbows or the pushiness to get themselves to the front of the queue or allow them to play the system. But public services are meant to be there when people need them most, and how the legacy system has sometimes treated people in these stressful or difficult situations is quite frankly an outrage, piling them up with bureaucracy and leaving them without the help they need.
Who is it who struggles to fill in the forms correctly or lacks the form of ID required? Who are the one in seven people across the UK who do not have a passport? They are often the strivers who are juggling work and caring responsibilities. This Government believe that everybody deserves a fair shot, and it is up to government to give people support and a leg-up when they need it.
Today we are launching this national conversation to discuss how we will build and use a digital ID. We want to know where frustrations exist with the current legacy system and which services could be made easier via the GOV.UK app. Later today, I will share a prototype of how a digital ID could work that shows how “government by app” could become a reality, joining up different departments and services so that the public do not have to do the work themselves.
In the initial stages, the digital ID system will start by making it easier to complete simple administrative tasks, such as proving one’s right to work when starting a job. Other tasks, such as paying car tax, ordering a passport or sorting childcare entitlements, could become part of the same app. I understand that the idea of a digital ID has sparked significant public interest, so I have instructed my department to ensure that this consultation goes further than any other that the Government have done before.
As part of the public consultation, which is live right now, we will invite a representative sample of the public at large-from all walks of life and all parts of the country-to form a people’s panel. That deliberative democracy process will build on our experience of supporting Parliament’s citizens assembly on net zero in the previous Parliament. Working with over 100 citizens, we will debate the difficult questions, find ways forward and build a system that can secure the trust and support of everyone. To those Members chuntering from a sedentary position about having a conversation with the public, I say, ‘What do you fear?’ This Government are very happy to talk to the public about what we are doing, and I look forward to talking to honourable Members’ constituents if they are selected to be part of the process.
I understand that this will not be for everyone. I hope that the services we build will be so good that most people will wish to use them, but for those who do not, I want to make sure that help is on hand in their local community. That is why the rollout of the digital ID will be accompanied by a digital inclusion drive to help people to access and use the services. I do not come to Parliament today with preconceived answers, and we will of course need to ensure that any future scheme is value for money, but I am interested to hear ideas about how we might use the people and buildings we already support through public expenditure to help local communities. We could use local post offices and postal workers, or libraries and jobcentres, to ensure that the majority of people can, if they need to, access digital assistance to use these services. For those who really do not wish to, traditional routes will of course still be made available.
As right honourable and honourable Members from across the House know, by the end of this Parliament, digital checks to verify someone’s right to work will be mandatory when they start a new job. It is currently a legal requirement for employers to check that a new employee has a legal right to work in the United Kingdom, but the often paper-based approach of photocopying or scanning a passport or a utility bill, without further checks, is vulnerable to fraud and does not create a clear record for enforcement agents of when and where checks have been carried out. That is why the Prime Minister has asked for those existing checks to be conducted digitally by the end of this Parliament. It will still be the employer’s responsibility, but employees will be able to choose between using their government digital ID-as we are setting out today-and using a passport, e-visa or other alternative method. It will be easier and quicker for individuals to demonstrate their right to work. For businesses, it will streamline and reduce the cost of compliance reporting. For the Home Office, it will create a digital audit trail of where checks have been carried out, to support enforcement where checks have not been carried out and to deter those who think that it is too easy to work illegally in the United Kingdom.
This is quite a technical consultation, but it is also a deeply political one. When the public voted for change they also voted for better public services. That is what Labour Governments at their best are all about: building new and innovative public services to support opportunity for all, rather than for just the privileged few-from the NHS in the 1940s, to the Open University in the 1960s and Sure Start centres in the 2000s. Today we are continuing that proud Labour tradition by building modern, digital public services that extend opportunity and support for people when they need it. This stands in stark contrast to political parties that wish to conserve the unacceptable status quo, or that offer to tear everything down and leave people on their own.
We want people across Britain to want this system, we want them to be part of it, and we want them to have the opportunity to shape it. This consultation is that opportunity. I look forward to the involvement of Members from across the House and of our constituents. I thank my honourable friend the Member for Makerfield, Josh Simons, for his work on this issue to date, and the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, my honourable friend the Member for Bury North, Mr Frith, for all the work that he will now do to make this a reality-for which I will take the credit if it goes well, and he the blame if it goes wrong. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, this Statement was delivered just one week ago and has already run into some serious difficulty. Reports in the press suggest that both the Health Secretary and the Education Secretary have made it clear that their departments will not provide some of the data required for the scheme. If that is correct, it raises a fundamental question: can this policy get off the ground? The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister announced that the Government sought to introduce a digital ID system that would allow individuals to log into the GOV.UK app to verify their identity. He said that “unlike an ordinary login, digital ID will work across different departments … so you can access all of the services you need in one place”. Yet it now appears that health and education-two of the areas where one might reasonably expect such assistance to be most useful-may not be included at all. The Chief Secretary stated that “digital ID will, over time, bring all other public services into one app” on your mobile phone. If that is the ambition, these reports raise serious questions about whether the Government’s own departments are prepared to make that vision a reality. This proposal raises serious questions about accessibility. Noble Lords will know that when government services move online and on to apps, they do not always become simpler or easier to use. Often, the opposite is true. These systems can take years to refine. The user experience can be poor and tasks that were once...
My Lords, I thank the Minister for this opportunity to respond to last week’s Statement and, indeed, for his personal engagement with us at that time. The Chief Secretary told the Commons on Tuesday that he was continuing the proud Labour tradition of building public services for the many. He invoked the NHS, the Open University and Sure Start. It was a stirring lineage. But there is history he omitted: Verify, which wasted over £220 million; GOV.UK One Login, for which the Cabinet Office sought up to £400 million; and now this national digital ID, which the OBR estimates will cost £1.8 billion over three years. This, indeed, is Verify 4.0. The Government have confirmed that possession of a digital identity will not be compulsory. We on these Benches opposed mandatory digital ID at every turn, and I am pleased to say that the Government have listened. My honourable friend Lisa Smart MP pressed the Chief Secretary directly in the Commons last week and received his wholehearted assurance. He continued to claim that using digital ID will be entirely optional. So, I ask the Minister in this House, will the voluntary character of this scheme be placed in the Bill the Government intend to bring forward later this year? How can we trust any Government on how personal data, once surrendered to the state, will actually be used? Earlier this month, this House considered an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, tabled by my noble friend Lady Doocey, which sought to prohibit police...
I thank the noble Earl and the noble Lord for their contributions. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, is asking me questions to which, as he very well knows, I am not going to give the answer. That is the whole point of the consultation, and across the Chamber, everyone knows this in reality. We want to ensure that the public can access public services in the same secure way as they access many things in today’s society, including banking. Most members of the public assume that there is this great big database; they assume that their data is being used. The reality is that there are these silos. This consultation is not proposing what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Earl were suggesting. It is not saying, “Let’s create this huge database, which could be vulnerable”. Instead, let us make it easier for the public to access the services that they need. On the questions about inclusion and accessibility, I met with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and his group, and I said that what we want to ensure through this consultation and digital ID system is a much more accessible system. We want a system that is more open to people who have been excluded because they have to produce or send a certain form, ring a certain number, or go through a certain call centre. What we are trying to achieve is greater accessibility. The question of inclusion also relates to people’s access to the internet. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, is not here, because I also...
My Lords, first, I take it from what the Minister has just said about costs that no sum has been earmarked in the current three-year expenditure review for the development of the scheme-can he confirm that? Secondly, will people in Scotland have to access the Government’s proposed ID scheme for those services that have been retained, and a separate ID scheme-namely, the Scotcard-for those services that have been devolved?
We will consult the devolved authorities on this; they will be a major part of the consultation. There is no definite cost for the programme because the design of what we are building has not been decided yet. Noble Lords should not just look at one line item on the shopping bill but rather the whole thing. The issue is that the status quo has costs. I know we often say this, but if we can develop a more efficient digital portal for people to use, it could potentially reduce costs and save the public and the Government money. That has to be a good thing. If you look at all the private sector services we use that currently have this sort of thing, they are doing it to reduce costs-although they often dress it up as “improving services”. Let us take banking: my accessibility to banking services has improved hugely over the years. I can do many more things online and through apps than I could ever have done before by visiting a local bank. I reassure the noble Earl and the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, that this will not be a mandatory system. When we are able to launch it, I suspect that it will be something that people want to use, because it will make their lives easier. That is what we should be doing.
My Lords, I declare an interest as the co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Digital Identity. The Minister said that he will consult widely on this and on what support there might be for it. Nearly 3 million people have signed the petition. If they have not already convinced the Government that they are opposed to it, how will the Government ensure that many of them will have the opportunity to feed the Government their opinion? This morning, I tried to log in to GOV.UK on a personal matter but was kicked out eight times. My digital understanding is pretty good, so that worried me greatly. I knew that this was coming up, so I wanted to draw the Minister’s attention to this issue. We have been talking about sovereignty and keeping all our information in one place. So far, the experience of GP services has been that we do not have exclusive access to our data because it is farmed out somewhere else. Has that been considered? How will we ensure, eventually, that any ID information is sovereign and held in this country under our Government or whatever system we set up? Finally, there has been lots of evidence of discrimination, particularly against Black and Asian men and Muslim women. I hope that the Government will seriously consider that aspect as well.
On the noble Baroness’s last point, how we look at inclusion and accessibility is really important in tackling those issues of discrimination. It is very important that the consultation looks at that. The noble Earl also raised a question about the NHS app which I did not explicitly address. That has developed very strongly, and it is very clear that that will continue. This will not be part of the NHS; it has never been planned that way. It is also about people having confidence that their medical records are kept absolutely secure, which is fundamental. This is about a tool to access a range of services. I hear the noble Baroness. The noble Earl raised OneLogin. There are issues about that. There are different forms of identifiers. Digital ID could provide a consistent identifier that could be used across all Governments, so instead of having to produce hard copies and photocopies, we just have that one ID on an app. We are using it in the private sector, in banking in particular but in other services too. I think the consultation will produce a clear idea of what people’s needs are and how the Government should respond. My right honourable friend Darren Jones is absolutely right; this is about putting our public services on a 21st-century footing.
I very much welcome the deliberative aspect of this consultation. It is good to see the Government doing that, and I hope it goes into other areas. I want to associate myself with many of the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, asked. Hopefully over this consultation period they will all be answered. I have two concerns. First, who is going to build this? Who is going to have access? Is this another gig for Palantir? That is my real question. Secondly, we have so many very good ID firms in the private sector here in the UK-it is something we excel at-but can the noble Lord say a little more about what they are going to do behind the ID? It seems to be all about the ID, but it is what happens at the other end that is the exciting bit, were he able to describe it.
I cannot be too prescriptive, but I can reassure the noble Baroness on her first point; a number of noble Lords have raised this issue. This will be a sovereign-based scheme. We will develop it in-house through government services. It will not be contracted out. On her other point on how this will develop, I think it will be led by people, not the Government. People will be demanding these things. No one has asked this specific question, but many parents want their children to have age identification. The noble Baroness has raised questions in other debates about how children are accessing things now. If they were required to have this, it may be a solution. I am not saying it is, but it is something that we would want to see as part of the consultation. The deliberative process, which is part of the consultation, will be a random selection of people, but it will be a much more intense consultation with those people, better identifying what their needs are. I cannot answer many of the questions that noble Lords have because we want to see what the consultation comes up with, but we know what people are generally seeking here. If legislation is required, we will debate what should be in a Bill and so on, but I am confident that the consultation will result in the better policy outcome that we all desire.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his update. First, can I take him back to a slightly more fundamental question that we are yet to address in this exchange? Why do the Government feel it is necessary at all to have a consultation, given the visceral public reaction to the proposal to introduce digital ID in the first place? That in itself seems like a pretty convincing consultation. We all know that the Government have stepped back politically from their original plan on digital ID and wound back to this position because of that reaction. Secondly, on the form of the consultation, the 100-person panel sounds very novel. Can the Minister give any assurances on the control over spending in that process and whether it will be value for money compared with other forms of consultation? Lastly, digital ID is one of a large number of policies that the Government seem determined to introduce despite the fact that it was not in the Labour Party’s manifesto at the last general election. Can he account for that fact and explain why the Government are determined to bring it forward when there is no mandate for them to do so?
I keep coming back to the point that when we are looking at public services and people’s access to them, there is a solution here that most people would be very happy about-but we will not determine that unless we have a fuller consultation. On the value-for-money element, the deliberative process will be through a process called sortation and a random postcode lottery. That is a way of selecting individuals in which everyone is given an equal chance to be invited and no individual can buy their way in or simply turn up to an event. But that does not stop everyone else participating in the wider consultation, so I think we have the best of all worlds. It will result in more effective consultation but also more cost-effective consultation. I come back to the point that this Government are determined to listen and better understand the needs of the public in relation to the services they provide. I think that is across all parties. No Government want to end up with the situation the noble Baroness described where you spend hours trying to get on to a public service and are constantly kicked out or rejected. This is about making the process easier. No matter what other people say this is about, I assure the noble Lord that it is about that.
My Lords, I endorse what my noble friend has said; I hope we all give this a great deal of support. Does he agree with me that it is a great pity that the pilot scheme abolished by the coalition Government in 2010 was not allowed to run? All the indications are that it was very popular with those who used it. On the point about the driving licence, as a non-driver and non-car owner, I resent the fact that I have to use a driving licence as a form of ID because it is the only ID that is practically acceptable. There is a government consultation at the moment about mandatory eye tests, which presumably I shall have to go through in order to get a driving licence-which I will never use-because it is the only acceptable ID. This will surely be very popular with many people. We cannot allow the nay-sayers or pressure groups to get in the way of making progress.
I agree with my noble friend. When we all sit down and have a sensible discussion about this and try to take the partisan politics away, we will reach a much better consensus. This consultation enables us to do that. At the outset, we have to put at the forefront of our thoughts the needs of the public in how they access services. My noble friend is right-driving licences have become the de facto ID. The fact is that the driving licence, as I said in my opening remarks, has data that I do not want handed out easily. That is why I think this solution will benefit the public and get cross-party support.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, in applauding the Government’s commitment in this Statement to deliberative democracy. That is an innovative step forward, but I am sure the Minister will want this Statement to be accurate, so I point out that it says: “This will not be a new experience for citizens. The public already use these systems every day, from banking to shopping”. More than 15% of Britons do not do online shopping and more than 12% do not do online banking, despite the fact that banks have been closing branches wholesale and trying very hard to force people online, whether they like it or not. Does the Minister agree that the way this Statement is phrased is really over-egging the pudding?
I do not agree at all. I think that 14% of people do not have some of the things that the noble Baroness referred to, but the world is changing very fast and if we are to address financial exclusion, inclusion and accessibility, this process can address many of those concerns. As I said, there are community organisations and community services. For example, many people use their post office, and we want to ensure they have that choice. We are moving into a world, as she rightly said, where banks are determining how they will provide services and Tesco is determining what I can buy or what I should buy using data supplied to it. The world is changing and it is about time that, first, the state caught up in provision of public services and, secondly, the public can determine what data is used for what purpose. That is why this is a good idea.
My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s points about the consultation process; there is a great deal to consult about. As one Tesco consumer to another, can my noble friend confirm that, almost irrespective of the consultation, the Government are determined to allow an individual, if they wish, to delete their digital ID? If there is any more that the Minister can say about the circumstances in which a digital ID might be withdrawn from an individual by the state, I would be grateful to hear his thoughts.
Let me address the first question. This is not a mandatory scheme and, certainly, if people have a digital ID, they can say they do not want it. I do not anticipate any circumstances where a Government would want to take away something that lets people access public services, but I hope the consultation will result in a much more open and transparent debate so that we focus much more on the needs of the public rather than what we think a Government might do.
My Lords, as ever with many big government ideas, there is a solution that is yet to find a problem. I am yet to hear a ministerial Statement on the very serious data events that happened at Companies House over the last week. I have not heard a Statement from Ministers at the other end, and I do not believe I have heard one in this House. What happened last week was probably the most serious data breach to hit Companies House in a generation. I am in practice as a chartered accountant, and let me advise the House and the Minister on what happened. If one were logged in to Companies House with one’s personal online registration, one could then find a backdoor route very simply to access any company record in the UK, change directors’ details, find their personal address, file company accounts and file new confirmation statements. This is serious stuff and it is why, me included, we have serious concerns about big government attempts at managing data, because it generally goes wrong. Where a poste restante email address is used, which is very commonplace within practices, those practices are going to have to trawl through all the companies registered with them. Many in the profession are asking: will the Government reimburse the practices which will have to spend many hundreds, if not thousands, of hours making sure that the Companies House foul-up has not affected their clients?
The noble Lord knows that I cannot possibly answer on his latter point, but I certainly will ensure that he gets a response about it. It is interesting that he was, I think, making the case for what we are proposing. The problem is that different government departments have different portals, different IDs, different ways of getting in and different ways of controlling the data. We want a much more secure digital ID that people will have confidence in. This is not about collecting new data, and it is not a big idea that we will have this central database of everything; this is about how people access public services. At the moment, if you want to get in through Companies House, the noble Lord described something that digital ID may resolve. But other departments have different schemes. Everyone has a story about being locked out of these services because they do not have the right identification or ID, and this is a solution that will help the public. That is what we should be talking about, rather than seeing this as being about big government. It is about delivering public services and not about big government.