Mandatory digital ID paves way for surveillance and exclusion, MPs hear

Digital ID benefits

Commenting during that session on the potential benefits of a digital ID system, Alexander Iosad, director of government innovation at the Tony Blair Institute, said it would allow people to prove things about themselves “in a much more convenient, private and secure way”, adding that it would also enable a high degree of personalisation in the delivery of public services.

“The ability to access services on the basis of who you are and what we know to be true about you … opens really exciting possibilities for how public services, and services more broadly, operate,” he said.  

The ability to access services on the basis of who you are and what we know to be true about you … opens really exciting possibilities for how public services, and services more broadly, operate

“It allows us to move from a reactive, one-size-fits-all model that was built for a different age, to a personalised, preventive model with a layer of accessibility that is not possible with a traditional model, where you have to apply for every service and prove again and again things about you that the state may already know.”

Laura Foster, an associate director of tech and innovation at trade association TechUK, also highlighted the benefits of time savings and convenience, which is why most people currently turn to digital IDs: “The government’s own statistics show that 44% of the people they surveyed have already used some form of digital ID service in the UK.”

She added that digital ID services are currently most developed in the financial services industry, and are already delivering benefits for the sector in terms of streamlined services and reduced compliance costs.

Iosad added that although digital ID will inevitably become a target for fraudsters itself, as “anything that becomes central to a process becomes a target”, there are examples where such systems have helped reduce fraud significantly. Iosad cited Norway’s introduction of a digital ID system, which has “reduced payment fraud from 1% to 0.00042% of transactions”.

However, at the centre of the digital ID debate are questions of trust, with many opposed to a mandatory system expressing concerns about data storage and centralising information on citizens, which could be repurposed down the line without people’s input or consent.

For Edgar Whitley, a professor in practice (information systems) at the London School of Economics, there needs to be a framework in place to ensure there is absolute clarity on how people’s sensitive personal data is used in the context of digital ID.

“Unfortunately, the announcement of the right-to-work proposals says, ‘Create intelligence data on businesses that are conducting checks’. That immediately makes everyone think there’s probably a record-keeping activity going on,” he said.  

“The BritCard proposals, which were one of the influences of this, said, ‘A digital identity would allow the Home Office to build a canonical record of where and when [immigration] checks have been successfully completed’.”

He added that while design choices can be made to not build certain record-keeping capacities into the system, people will remain concerned if they believe these aspects could be turned on and off by the state at will.

Illegal immigration and work checks

On the government’s stated goal of using a digital ID system to clamp down on illegal immigration and conduct right-to-work checks, multiple witnesses pointed out that employers are already able to carry out these checks digitally, and have been doing so since June 2025, when the Data (Use and Access) Act was passed in Parliament.

They also noted that a digital ID system would make little difference to employers already illegally hiring workers.

“For a rogue employer who is employing illegal immigrants, a digital ID is not suddenly going to make them go, ‘Oh, I’ll behave myself and do the appropriate checks and not hire these people’,” said Whitley.

He also questioned the government’s framing of a digital ID as “voluntary”.

“As I understand it, the current proposal is that any time you want to take on a job, with a new contract of employment, you will have to have a digital ID, and the only way an employer will be able to employ you is if they have checked the digital ID. That is the thing that most people are reacting against. There were reports saying, ‘Don’t worry, it’s going to be voluntary’ – until you have to change jobs, which means that everybody is going to have to have it.”

He added that making digital ID mandatory will inevitably create all sorts of problems around identity exclusion.

On the exclusion aspect, James Baker, a programme manager at the Open Rights Group, said such a system “has the potential to marginalise people from being able to participate in the economy” because if something goes wrong with their digital ID, they are automatically excluded from being able to earn a living.

He further added that the use of digital IDs is already mandatory for migrants under the Home Office’s electronic visa (eVisa) scheme, which has created a range of issues for those affected.

Highlighting how the eVisa scheme has so far been plagued by data quality and integrity issues, Baker said there are many real-world examples of where the mandatory scheme is causing harm.

“People with the right to work in the UK have lost out on job opportunities because they have not been able to access their share code to prove their right to work,” he said.

“We have had examples of people going into a shop and being asked to show their eVisa share code to purchase alcohol, and they have been unable to do it. Where you have mandatory systems introduced like that, it is not hypothetical. We are already seeing real-world examples of exclusion in existence.”

A government-issued, mandatory digital ID has the potential to create an incredibly intrusive system of surveillance and data collection

Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, added that while the eVisa is currently limited to migrants, a mandatory digital ID system would create a situation where everyone needs a permit to go about their everyday lives.

“A government-issued, mandatory digital ID has the potential to create an incredibly intrusive system of surveillance and data collection, and it opens up possibilities for the government to issue and revoke permissions in certain ways,” she said.

“Unless you have this digital ID card, you will not be able to work. Already, other government departments are talking about renting, benefits, education, and so on. I think we would be having a completely different conversation if the government were talking about a system that they thought was so attractive that, if they made it available, lots of people would want to use it. Instead, it is a mandatory system that is paired with restrictions on people’s liberties.”

Carlo said while the government is introducing the system to ostensibly deal with illegal immigration, she doubts “anyone in this room genuinely believes … [the system] is about illegal working”, adding that she is “incredibly” concerned about function creep and what the system will ultimately end up being used for.

“That begs the question, what is it really about, and what will the other uses be? This was announced by the prime minister on a Friday afternoon, and just hours later, the government webpage about digital ID was talking about tax, benefits, education, childcare and many other uses for a digital ID,” she said.

Multiple witnesses also raised issues around the cost of updating the UK’s legacy systems for a government digital verification stack to work, and highlighted the importance of open source for trust in this area.

“There is a risk in this debate about digital ID where, if we see it as separate from the broader digital transformation, the digital transformation will head in one direction, the digital ID ambitions will head in another, and they will not connect,” said Tony Blair Institute’s Iosad.

“In our view, the conversation about digital ID is an opportunity to pay the kind of attention we should have done for a decade or more to digital transformation in government. The scale of opportunity is immense; we have missed out on a lot of what we should have done, and now is the time to mitigate.”