The UK government’s digital identity scheme: Dystopian nightmare or modernised public services?
Critics and supporters of digital ID are honing their arguments for the government’s consultation – but it’s the public that will decide. How should you choose?
The Rashomon Effect is a narrative technique pioneered by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, whereby each act of a story shows the same scene from the perspective of a different character. At the end, the viewer is left to decide what is really going on.
On 10 March, the prime minister’s chief secretary, Darren Jones, the Cabinet minister in charge of the policy, launched a consultation on a digital identity scheme for the UK – including a unique, but somewhat gimmicky, “people’s panel” of citizens to understand the public’s views.
He promised “government by app” and the ability to interact with public services through a mobile phone as easily as shopping with Amazon, communicating via WhatsApp, or streaming on Netflix. “In the future, you’ll be able to get all your government admin done in the time it takes to make a cup of tea,” said Jones, in a video posted on social media.
This should not be a controversial suggestion for any government in our massively connected, app-driven world. And yet…
In and of itself, digital identity is an entirely benign technology. Like any technology, it becomes controversial only in the way it is implemented and used.
Digital identity is not identity cards – they are fundamentally different things. But the British cultural and political antipathy towards the concept of physical identity cards – the threat of a so-called “papers, please” society – means the mere suggestion of a government digital identity scheme has been met with protest marches, a three-million-strong petition, and outrage from privacy campaigners.
Can we trust the government to not be malign in its approach? It is the Rashomon Effect in action: whose story should we believe?
Act 1: Big Brother will be watching you
Privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch describes the government’s digital identity app as a “comprehensive logbook of our lives”.
“A national digital ID is a multibillion-pound scheme that no-one voted for and that it’s quite possible no one will use,” said senior legal and policy officer Jasleen Chaggar.
“What confidence can the public have to hand over their private information when the risks to their privacy and security are so high? The government should drop this digital ID disaster altogether.”
Big Brother Watch further claimed that the digital ID consultation shows that government will allow the police to repurpose digital ID photos “as mugshots to create a population-wide facial recognition database”.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch wrote on X that, “Keir Starmer’s hated national digital ID scheme is being resurrected … again. But he has no idea on the cost, scope, or when it will be introduced.”
ID cards might be government code on your phone this time, but the British people will reject them again
Phil Booth, NO2ID
A variety of seemingly coordinated social media posts from opposition MPs and campaign groups called for the digital ID scheme to be scrapped, each parroting the same line: “We don’t want it. We don’t need it. No one voted for it.”
To critics – of which there are many – digital ID is the prime example of state over-reach. It’s the government monitoring our activity online, creating a central database of critical identity data with which to surveil and ultimately control the population. It will cost billions of pounds and nobody will use it, they say.
They warn that the scheme risks handing our most personal data to whichever US company will be chosen to develop the system. They drop the name of Palantir into the conversation – the “bogeyman” of Big Tech due to its controversial role in Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, and links to the CIA and US military.
The data that government collects will be a “honeypot for hackers”, they warn – and the British state’s woeful track record on security and privacy means every threat actor in Russia, Iran and North Korea will gain access to our personal information. They often cite Computer Weekly’s April 2024 scoop about serious cyber security and data protection problems in One Login, the government single sign-on system that will underpin the digital ID.
Phil Booth, national coordinator for NO2ID, the group that successfully campaigned against the identity card plan put in place by prime minister Tony Blair’s government in the 2000s, cited the past success in overturning Blair’s policy.
“Keir Starmer is taking another shot, this time spinning Blair’s ID cards as the panacea for our broken public services,” he said.
“When they found out ID cards really meant lifelong tracking and a politically controlled government IT system determining if you are ‘valid’ or not, the public rejected them last time. The cards might be government code on your phone this time, but the effect is the same and the British people will reject them again.”
Digital identity will be the thin end of the wedge, say its critics – they may be voluntary for now, but what’s to stop a future government making them mandatory and used as a tool for denying access to public services for anyone the government considers, for whatever reason, to be ineligible or unworthy.
The three million people who signed an online petition calling for identity cards to be scrapped would be entirely sympathetic to the many warnings from anti-ID campaigners. It’s a compelling, dystopian vision of the potential consequences of a seemingly benign policy proposal.
More than 40 companies in the UK have received formal government accreditation to provide digital verification services, and have already delivered many millions of digital ID and age verification transactions for several million UK citizens. Their experiences show that, when digital identity is used well, the public is comfortable with it.
However, Starmer’s initial plan for a mandatory government ID threatened the viability of the private sector market and a ruinous reputation for the technology. As a result – along with concerns among MPs about the compulsory nature of the plan – Starmer backtracked and made his digital identity scheme voluntary.
Chief secretary Jones acknowledged Starmer’s mistake in the initial announcement, when he told MPs last week, “What 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.”
The government points to the widespread popularity and societal benefits of digital identity in other countries – countries considered liberal or democratic or economically successful, such as Denmark, Estonia and Singapore.
Launching the consultation this week, Jones said he wants the ID app to be something people use because they want to, not because they have to. He hopes that this approach helps to demonstrate that the government is listening to people’s concerns and that digital ID will be a benefit for anyone accessing public services.
“People too often dread their interactions with public services,” said Jones. “Endless telephone calls, complicated printed forms and having to tell your story multiple times to different parts of government.
“I want to change that and make public services work for you. The new digital ID will make that possible, allowing you to log on and prove who you are to access public services more quickly, easily and securely.”
The consultation suggests the government is learning.
The digital ID system will help transform public services, but we want you to want it and be part of it
Darren Jones, UK government
There will be no central database of digital identity information – data continues to reside with the Whitehall departments delivering any particular service, as it does today.
The National Cyber Security Centre – the GCHQ team responsible for securing the UK’s most sensitive IT systems – will be involved in the design and development of the app from the start.
The government has said that it “does not recognise” the figure of £1.8bn that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility suggested as the cost of developing and supporting the digital ID app. The consultation stresses that no final decisions have been made on the design of the app, and hence no estimate of the cost can be made. “We want people in the UK to shape the system and how it will work,” says the consultation document.
And besides, Jones says the cost will be outweighed by the “billions and billions” of pounds of savings that widespread use of the app will deliver.
Digital ID will be the secure “front door” to public services – a rudimentary prototype developed to show the possibilities included tasks such as paying for car tax, claiming childcare vouchers, and even finding out your bin collection day.
“The digital ID system will help transform public services, but we want [the public] to want it and be part of it,” said Jones.
He said that the enabling legislation for the digital ID policy will enshrine its voluntary nature into law. Any future government that wants to make it mandatory would have to obtain the approval of Parliament.
Jones hopes the app will be launched before the end of the current Parliament in 2029, with one or two services – notably, digital right to work checks – and other services added over time subsequently.
And that claim that the app will hand your photo to the police as part of an enormous facial recognition database?
The consultation acknowledges that the app will involve use of biometric data, and that existing laws allow the use of government-held biometric data in police facial recognition systems. That’s no different to the photos you upload when applying for passports or driving licences – and the government is separately consulting on the legal framework that governs the use of facial recognition technology in law enforcement.
So, the claim is not untrue – but it’s somewhat hyperbolic. Jones also stressed that the police will have no powers to demand people show their digital identity – no “papers, please” here, he insisted.
Digital identity is an opportunity – to boost the economy, and to improve individuals’ control over the way the data held about them by government is used, say its supporters.
According to David Crack, chair of the Association of Digital Verification Professionals, in an article for Computer Weekly last year: “If we get this right in the UK, we won’t just be rebuilding the country and creating economic growth. We’ll empower people. We’ll unlock opportunity. And we’ll show the world how democracy can evolve – and thrive – in the digital era.”
Act 3: Making your mind up
The final act of this story, according to the Rashomon Effect, is where you, the public, get to decide what’s going on.
For Crack, the task facing UK residents is a fundamental one: “The consultation needs to resolve a deceptively simple question: is your identity something you own, or something the state owns?”
Supporters of digital identity, clearly, will say it should be something you own.
Critics, of course, will say it’s something the state intends to own.
“People define their identity through the choices they make – the services they use, the products they buy, and what they are entitled to from the state,” added Crack.
“Access to those things is usually conditional on sharing information about yourself,” he said. “But the data generated by those interactions says something about you. The real question is: who owns that information – the individual, or the government? That is the issue the national debate now needs to address.”
Over to you, UK public, to write the ending you prefer.
