Government wants to build digital ID system in-house

Time to consult

Following the announcement of a digital ID in the UK by prime minister Keir Starmer in September 2025, the government promised to launch a public consultation on the scheme in the beginning of 2026. Jones told the committee that the consultation was due imminently, and would shape how the government takes the scheme forward.

Jones said this was not just a technical consultation for companies interested in digital ID, but something that the public can engage in.

“There will be traditional consultation methods, as you would expect – it is our legal requirement to do that – but we will be announcing shortly how we are going above and beyond that to involve the public in more of a national conversation about how it might be done,” he said.

He recognised that following the prime minister’s announcement about the scheme, the government stayed silent, which was a mistake. “We should not have left the period of silence,” he said, adding that there should have been public engagement right away to allow the public to fully understand the goal behind the digital ID.

“We saw off the back of the digital ID announcement was a lot of mis- and disinformation that scared people, and we were pretty silent about what we wanted it to be and what the benefits were. We have to make sure that we do that more effectively online, as well as through the traditional mechanisms,” Jones said, adding that he hoped the consultation would help people better understand and alleviate fears.

Privacy concerns and legacy IT

Originally, the digital ID scheme was billed as a mandatory for for right-to-work checks, however in January 2026, the government backtracked on this and removed the compulsory aspect, following uproar from privacy campaigners.

While employers will be required to conduct right-to-work checks digitally by 2029, employees will not be obliged to hold a government digital ID, and able to choose between using physical documents, private sector ID or the government’s version.

“We will provide a digital ID that will be free for people to have but only if they want to have it and use it. If they still want to use their physical passport and non-Government providers of ID verification, they are perfectly entitled to do so,” Jones said.

The Home Affairs Committee also highlighted concerns from the public around the privacy aspect of a digital ID, with people fearing the UK is becoming a surveillance state, and the impact it could have on the public.

Jones said that this was misinformation and that he envisioned a federated data system where different types of data are secure in different departments, but that if a person gives government permission, it can pull that together to provide a service.

“What I want to try to achieve is that you get more control over your data than you do now, and more control over your data than you might do with private sector companies, so that you are in control and there is transparency,” he said.

“We will be consulting on some of the questions on security standards. I have asked the team to make sure it is at least equivalent to banking level security, with banking apps. Some of that is about device-level security, two-factor authentication and those types of things, but we will also have system security requirements about where the data is being held and how it interacts with other IT systems.

“My personal view – as opposed to government policy, because we have not consulted – is that I would rather that was built and held by the government with parliamentary oversight and accountability as opposed to outsourcing it to a private company to run on our behalf.”

However, one of the key challenges with the government building and holding the data in-house, is that Whitehall is fraught with legacy systems. In order to create a fully functioning digital ID across government departments, it would need to ensure all legacy systems were upgraded or replaced.

Jones said that subject to the consultation, the government is looking at how the current passport system functions and building from the existing Gov.uk App and Gov.uk Wallet.

“The challenge for us on legacy IT will be in the future when we are trying to take an existing customer service that may be on a legacy IT system and onboard it to the app, which will have to be a cloud-based system. That is when the business case comes into play. For some services it may end up being more expensive as you transition off legacy IT into the new one,” he said, adding that he did not envision any legacy IT problems for the actual digital ID build.

The future of digital ID

While the initial use for digital ID by the end of this Parliament in 2029 is solely focused on right-to-work checks, Jones said he is more focused on the “bigger prize” of being able to use digital ID across government services.

“There are lots of simple customer service issues that are absolutely capable of being put into one place. In time, we can then deal with some of the bigger, more complicated ones that should be much easier for people,” he said, adding that this includes local government services.

“My sense is that the early examples are probably going to be the smaller, simpler ones, just as we start to get the system working before we get to the bigger prizes that will be available in the years ahead.”