Has Digital ID Really Been Dropped?
New PM Andy Burnham says he has scrapped the “notorious” digital ID. But has he really?
In September, the government announced plans to introduce a mandatory digital ID system by 2029, requiring IDs to prove the legal right to work. Keir Starmer argued they would make it tougher to work illegally and secure Britain’s borders.
But a whopping 2.8 million people warned in a petition that a national ID system would be “a step towards mass surveillance and digital control.”
So there were signs of relief sceptics of state overreach when Labour’s mandatory digital ID for workers was dropped by the new Manchester PM.
But what’s the score, here?
The Infrastructure Never Left
Deputy Labour leader and Burnham ally Lucy Powell said this week the money saved by scrapping the scheme “was not an insignificant amount” and would be reprioritised elsewhere.
But the Institute for Government noted that Burnham won’t actually be able to redeploy any “savings,” because the ID scheme was never funded in the first place, there was nothing to bank.
The think tank also flagged that around 60 people are still on the project team, with no clarity yet on what happens to their work or the consultation results already gathered.
But the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which is now being abolished as part of a wider Whitehall shake-up, is responsible for OneLogin, the single login service which will become the only way to access all central government services., and for the governance of the UK’s digital identity market.
OneLogin is now mandatory for every company director via Companies House. The UK is set to release their Digital ID wallet app by 2027, store government-issued credentials digitally within the GOV.UK One Login app.
Hmmmm ok.
Darren Jones, the former Treasury minister and Keir Starmer loyalist, who was sacked by Burnham this week said on X the digital ID programme was “unfunded.”
But a £280 million Find a Tender notice DSIT quietly published on 30 June for GOV.UK One Login delivery partners,, which explicitly lists Digital ID and Wallet as workstreams going forward.
So the infrastructure around it (One Login, Wallet, identity verification) is very much funded, live, and expanding.
Also in a July 22 , the government said it “made a number of changes to the machinery of government to rewire the state.”
And this included said that policy “on digital identity will move to the newly expanded Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.”
Great Firewall
The UK has pretty much become a digital fortress already.
The government is using the Online Safety Act, a mega law which polices the internet, to fine the American messaging platforms like 4Chan over non compliance including requirements to protect its users “from illegal content.”
Free speech lawyer Preston Byrne says 4Chan won’t pay a penny proposed fine by the UK’s media regulator Ofcom as it enforces the law.
“It’s the beginning of the end of that chapter. The chapter ends when Britain has to choose between erecting a Great Firewall to block 4chan – something it has never done over speech, and which wouldn’t even work – and conceding that its regulatory writ has territorial limits,” Byrne said on X on July 23.
The government has also announced a social media ban for under-16s, meaning everyone will need to pass through age-verification technology.
They’ve effectively bolted a facial recognition scanner onto every fag packet of cigarettes.
Furthermore Police in England and Wales are preparing a major expansion of live facial recognition, with the number of surveillance vans set to increase five-fold.
Shabana Mahmood, who is still the UK’s Home Secretary, outlined her vision for the criminal justice system, saying:
“When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times.”
Inspiration from 18th-century prison design that has since become a powerful symbol of total surveillance!?
Full Blown Digital ID
The British author and blogger Pete North put it bluntly on July 21.
“They have not scrapped digital ID at all,” he said on X.
“We already have a digital ID system and it will gradually expand in scope for every interaction with government until you can’t function without it. It will keep happening by stealth without protest until one day we have full blown digital ID, nobody will ever remember life without it, and nobody serious will propose abolishing it, ” he added.
You’d best start believing in digital ID, Britain, you’re already in one.