Steven Roy and Tom Darksen

The recent climb down by the Labour Government on the mandatory introduction of digital ID followed polling conducted after Keir Starmer’s initial announcement of the scheme, showing that less than a third of the population were in support of it. Approximately three million people signed the Parliamentary Petition ‘Do not introduce digital ID cards’. Opposition was also voiced in political circles, and from various civil liberties groups etc.  

Many are sceptical that this apparent U-turn (one of several made by the government in recent months) is a PR stunt by an extremely unpopular government, rather than anything borne out of consideration for the rights and concerns of the rest of us.

The concern now is that instead of making it mandatory, the government will slowly streamline services to people who opt into using it. Before you know it, it could be virtually impossible to use anything without it. While it may be ‘voluntary’ in nature, in effect it will be mandated by making it impossible to do anything otherwise. Similar concerns exist with regard to the phasing out of cash.

It is expected that the system will be based on two Government built systems: Gov.uk One login and Gov.uk Wallet. Currently more than 12 million people have supposedly signed up to One Login. Gov.uk Wallet has not yet been launched. 

Significant personal data is also held by the NHS, which has for years been under threat from creeping privatisation. In 2023, Palantir were awarded a contract for the national rollout of the NHS Federated Data Platform (FP), a system for centralising valuable patient data from across different sectors of healthcare. An array of government agencies also hold data ranging from passport, driving, tax and other records.

Digital ID forms one of the cornerstones of Project 2030, and the framework for its introduction is set out in the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. This may come as a surprise to most, since introducing digital ID has never formed part of any election manifesto and no one has ever voted for it. One could reasonably infer from this that it was always the intention to introduce use of digital ID by stealth.

Unlike other countries, Britain has never had an ID system. It was Tony Blair who first proposed introducing an ID system into Britain when he was the Prime Minister. People at the time were also strongly against it and it failed to gain any traction. The Tony Blair Institute is one of the biggest champions of digital ID and the corporation that was chosen to implement it is run by his son.

When last year the current Government first announced the policy for digital ID, it argued that mandatory digital ID for workers would make it easier to clamp down on immigrants working illegally. One cannot help thinking that this was an attempt by Labour to jump on board Reform’s vacuous ‘stop the boats’ narrative – an attempt to appeal to the undoubted concern amongst many about the levels of mass immigration and the failures of successive Governments to get on top of this issue. 

Yet employers are already under a duty to carry out ID checks, and anyone who works or claims benefits requires a National Insurance Number. On top of that, with all the know your customer and anti-money laundering checks that banks are required to carry out, it is likely that it is only unscrupulous employers and criminal networks employing ‘illegals’. Thus it is difficult to see how the introduction of digital ID will make any difference to the situation. Allowing the unchecked criminal behaviour of a small minority to shape what kind of society we live in is an abdication of a government’s responsibility to its citizens. The case for asking everyone to give up their freedoms and civil liberties forever because the country has lost control of immigration is a tenuous one.

The fear is that it will be used as a surveillance tool to monitor and control people’s behaviour, to suppress dissent, including holding thoughts and opinions that run contrary to approved government narratives and then to punish people by preventing them from accessing things like banking and other necessary services, in effect placing people in a form of digital imprisonment.

Whilst some may still live under the illusion that such things could never happen in Western Democracies, the following recent events are worth noting:

• Britain has the highest numbers of any country for arrests for social media posts, closely followed by Germany, where laws have been passed that prevent people from criticising their politicians. 
• Britain has been widely using the Terrorism Act 2000 to arrest, detain, question and incarcerate ‘dissenting’ voices, including journalists, politicians, ex-diplomats, doctors, ex-policemen and protesters.
• British, European and US citizens have been sanctioned, debanked, or had their citizenship removed.
• Since digital ID was rolled out in Ukraine, the country has been turned into an openly fascist dictatorship and a concentration camp for adult males, who are being rounded up and dragged off by their government to fight and to die in their millions for NATO and to protect an internal corrupt, oligarchic elite. It is noteworthy that the Tony Blair Institute on its website, currently upholds Ukraine as a model for the introduction of a Digital ID system.
• The British Government and much of the EU are calling for increased military spending and the conscription of their citizens to continue to fight their proxy war against Russia, having begun to run out of Ukrainians.
• The genocide in Gaza, the extra judicial killings such as the pager attacks in Lebanon and the political and other assassinations, including of a large number of journalists, throughout West Asia were all data driven, using technology created by such companies as Palantir to target and murder people.
• The handling of the COVID 19 crisis, in which amongst other things people were mandated to take experimental vaccines, has come in for much justified criticism and has eroded the trust that many had in government.

There is a fundamental opposition to digital ID based purely on the concept that considerations of freedom and liberty within a society must always outweigh any perceived technological benefits and cost and other efficiencies. This is especially so because technology increasingly has the ability to control all aspects of our lives and to potentially create a 1984 digital dystopia. 

The hurdle is for the government to create the necessary conditions of trust and confidence between itself and its citizens. This requires that the government be honest, upfront, forthright and competent and to put people at the heart of everything that it does. Yet the perception, at home and abroad, is that we have a political system instead that is based on mediocrity, incompetence, deception, PR and keeping people uninformed and in the dark from cradle to grave, duly assisted by a compliant media.

There is an increasing belief that the government does not actually represent the true interests of ordinary people or indeed of the country. As has already been alluded to, the conditions where fundamental individual freedoms and liberties are under attack like never before already exist. Additionally, the stealth tactics employed to date by the government and referred to above do not exactly instill any trust or confidence whatsoever. 

This government and those succeeding it have a mountain to climb before digital ID should even be contemplated. However, without an ongoing push-back from the people, the process towards bringing in digital ID could still become unstoppable.