British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced his government will enforce a new digital ID system. Starmer indicated that the system would be in place by the end of the current Parliament and that it would deter illegal immigration to the United Kingdom (UK) and speed up access to government services.

Downing Street says that the proposed digital ID will sit in a GOV.UK wallet on phones and serve as: “authoritative proof” of identity and immigration status, while stressing that there will be no general requirement to carry or show it outside of circumstances mandated by the government.

The government will however mandate that employers will be legally obliged to use the system to confirm the status of employees.

Other proposed uses of the new ID system include banking, renting, and voting.

There was no mention of digital IDs in Labour’s 2024 election manifesto. Careful review of that document shows no reference to national digital identity schemes, digital wallets, or mandatory checks. Instead, Labour’s pledges on technology and data focused on service improvements, such as creating a National Data Library, introducing a single unique identifier for children’s services, and upgrading the National Health Service App to give patients more control over their health records.

Critics

For critics of the new ID system, this raises a question of democratic mandate: a scheme now being rolled out by the Starmer government was not placed before voters at the general election and therefore lacks the legitimacy of an explicit electoral promise.

The move revives a debate that dogged the last Labour government. Tony Blair’s Identity Cards Act 2006 established a national ID document and register, before the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition, which came to power in 2010, repealed the law and destroyed the related National Identity Register the following year.

Public resistance to the new ID is significant.

A Parliamentary petition opposing digital ID cards has surpassed 2.7 million signatures. It has therefore crossed the formal 100 000 threshold that automatically triggers a process that requires Parliament to consider the issue for a debate.

Civil liberties groups and security experts warn of risks that range from exclusion for people without easy access to technology, to the creation of attractive targets for hackers if systems interconnect or centralise attributes like biometrics, income, and location. Critics also fear mission creep, where credentials built for work checks expand into routine checkpoints across daily life.

Social credit

Proponents say the measure will reduce the likelihood of forgery of government documents and illegal employment. However, China’s model of tech-enabled social control shows how identity-linked databases and pervasive surveillance can be used to restrict movement and services and to punish disfavoured individuals and groups.

Human Rights Watch, a leading international rights watchdog founded in 1978, has documented blacklist mechanisms and mass surveillance infrastructure in China that enable broad behavioural control, including restrictions on travel, limits on access to services, and the public shaming of individuals through credit-style scoring systems. These tools are built on the fusion of digital identity, biometric tracking, and state data sharing, creating what many analysts call a “social credit” environment.

Surveillance

The UK proposal is not necessarily different in either design or legal context, although Labour ministers insist it will not be used for policing or general surveillance. The underlying capabilities of the new system would, however, allow exactly that. Any state-issued credential that links a digital personal identity to access to employment, finance, benefits and potentially voting, carries inherent risks. Once established, such a system could be gradually expanded or repurposed by future governments.

Britain already has a track-record of legal measures introduced for one particular purpose being expanded to other purposes over time. Anti-terror laws, for example, have been used in non-terror investigations and surveillance cases, while public order powers have been applied to peaceful demonstrations. That pattern of function creep underlines why restraint and strict statutory safeguards are essential if the UK is to avoid sliding toward a model of governance where access to daily life is contingent on state approval.

The UK already imprisons people for what they say online, with courts handing down custodial sentences for social media posts. In October 2024, Lucy Connolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for a tweet judged to incite racial hatred, a punishment upheld on appeal in May 2025. Critics argue it is dangerous to hand a government that already uses the law to jail individuals for speech the added power of a system that could tie access to work, finance, and services to a centralised digital identity.