Responses to proposals give Downing Street a range of damning assessments to choose from, including, ‘painfully out of touch and increasingly authoritarian’, ‘ludicrous and ill thought out’, and ‘wholly unBritish’
Opponents from across the breadth of the political spectrum have spoken out to condemn prime minister Keir Starmer’s freshly announced plans for a national digital identity.
The virtual ID – which would be compulsory for the completion of the Right to Work checks required before starting a new job – is to be introduced by the end of the current parliamentary term in 2029, government has said. A public consultation is to be launched later this year and, before the system is implemented, Downing Street has promised an “outreach programme, including face-to-face support for citizens who are struggling to access the scheme”.
In the meantime, senior figures from a comprehensive range of other parties in the UK has spoken out against the Labour plans – as have civil representatives of civil society groups focused on privacy and human rights.
Writing on X, the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that “Labour’s ‘digital ID’ gimmick won’t stop the boats” and pointed her followers towards a petition against the plans created by her party.
“It’s a desperate distraction from their scandals,” she added. “We won’t back any system that makes ID mandatory for British citizens.”
The Liberal Democrats technology and science spokesperson, Victoria Collins, said that: “[We] cannot support a mandatory digital ID where people are forced to turn over their private data just to go about their daily lives. People shouldn’t be turned into criminals just because they can’t have a digital ID, or choose not to. This will be especially worrying to millions of older people, people living in poverty and disabled people – who are more likely to be digitally excluded.”
The Reform leader Nigel Farage said he was “firmly opposed to Keir Starmer’s digital ID cards”, which he claimed would not help tackle illegal immigration but would “be used to control and penalise the rest of us”.
“The state should never have this much power,” he added.
In a rare bit of common ground for the two parties the Green leader Zach Polanski said that “this government’s priorities are painfully out of touch and increasingly authoritarian”.
One of the party’s four MPs, Brighton Pavilion member Sian Berry, added: “After being used in WW2, compulsory ID cards were abolished in 1952 because of the widespread sentiment that they are fundamentally at odds with British values and civil liberties. That was true then and it’s true now.”
There are even voices of dissent in Starmer’s own Labour parliamentary party, with the MP for Leeds East Richard Burgon posting on X to assert that “I will not be supporting this”.
“Tony Blair has been pushing this agenda for more than two decades, always using one excuse or another to justify it,” he said. “It’s never been fully implemented – and we must make sure it’s stopped this time too.”
The first minister of Scotland, John Swinney of the Scottish National Party, also voiced his opposition. He also took issue with the name by which the proposal has already become popularly known.
“I am opposed to mandatory digital ID – people should be able to go about their daily lives without such infringements,” he said. “That aside, by calling it BritCard, the prime minister seems to be attempting to force every Scot to declare ourselves British. I am a Scot.”
The term ‘BritCard’ – which not been formally used by the government – was also an issue raised by Plaid Cymru Westminster leader Liz Saville Roberts.
“IDs could reduce some of the paperwork we face, but Plaid Cymru will never support a system that shuts people out of essential services or puts personal data at risk. And most people in Wales identify as Welsh only – a ‘BritCard’ would go down like a lead balloon here,” she said.
Northern Irish first minister, Michelle O’Neill of Sinn Fein, said that Downing Street’s proposal for a mandatory digital ID card is ludicrous and ill-thought out.
She added: “This proposal is an attack on the Good Friday Agreement and on the rights of Irish citizens in the North of Ireland.”
Representatives of the second-largest party in Stormont, the Democratic Unionist Party, also criticised the plans.
Human rights advocacy group Liberty said that it “has long opposed the introduction of compulsory identity cards,” adding that a “compulsory system would fundamentally change the relationship between individual and state [and] would also exclude the most vulnerable members of our society”.
The organisation added that “technological advancements mean that digital ID systems pose an even greater risk to privacy than they did when last proposed in the 2000s”.
Big Brother Watch was another civil society group to reiterate its long-standing opposition to the idea of a digital identity regime.
Director Silkie Carlo said: “Plans for a mandatory digital ID would make us all reliant on a digital pass to go about our daily lives, turning us into a checkpoint society that is wholly unBritish. Digital IDs would do absolutely nothing to deter small boats but would make Britain less free, creating a domestic mass surveillance infrastructure that will likely sprawl from citizenship to benefits, tax, health, possibly even internet data and more. Incredibly sensitive information about each and every one of us would be hoarded by the state and vulnerable to cyberattacks.”
