Britain should embrace voluntary ID cards, Keir Starmer suggests
Britain should adopt voluntary ID cards, Sir Keir Starmer has said, just weeks after announcing that digital ID would become mandatory for working in the UK.
The Prime Minister said that while mandatory digital IDs were “crucial” for employment, the UK could gain a “significant advantage” by adapting the cards for wider use.
His comments came on a flight to India for a two-day trade visit to Mumbai, where he will hold meetings on how the South Asian country uses digital identity.
Opinion polls show support for the cards has fallen since the Prime Minister announced that work would become compulsory in the UK by 2029, his flagship announcement on the eve of the Labor Party conference last month.
But the prime minister rejected suggestions that he had cut off public support for the plan, saying the IDs were important for his party to fulfill its manifesto commitment to combat illegal immigration.
“We need to address the fact that too many people can come to this country and work illegally,” he said.
“That’s why mandatory ID to work is really important. I think there’s a case to be made for the benefits of voluntary ID to other areas, and frankly we need to make that case.”
“I think that’s a really important discussion for us. So on the one hand it’s essential for business, but I actually think it would be a good passport.”
“I don’t know how many times the rest of you have had to look for three bills in the bottom drawer when you wanted to send your kids to school or when you applied for that. [it] It makes me disappointed. “I think we can gain a significant advantage.”
He added: “We are going to a country that has already done authentication and has had great success with it, India.”
On the day the Prime Minister officially unveiled ID cards, one of his closest political allies suggested ID cards could be expanded to become “the foundation of the modern state”.
The Prime Minister’s new chief secretary, Darren Jones, said they could be used for “really quite exciting civil service reform” in the future.
In response, Tory MP and former cabinet minister David Frost said Mr Jones’s remarks expressed “why so many of us are concerned about digital identity” and that the petition against digital identity had reached more than 1 million signatures.
Culture minister Lisa Nandy said on Friday that the plan to introduce a digital ID did not mean everyone would have to carry it with them and that it would be “entirely their choice” whether people use it or not.
The ID card scheme, which will require an act of parliament to implement, comes after mounting pressure on ministers to take tougher action to tackle immigration as small boat crossings hit record levels this summer and a backlog of asylum applications remains above 75,000; this pressure has been exacerbated by the UK Reformation’s success at the polls.
At the same time, Sir Keir faces intense pressure over public services and rising welfare costs after his own MPs blocked a plan to cut £5bn from the social security budget earlier this year.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch described the ID plans as “a gimmick that will do nothing to stop the boats”.
The Liberal Democrats said they would fight “tooth to toe” against the “absurd” plan, while Amnesty International said the move was a “dangerous overreaction from the government that puts the rights of all people in the UK at risk”.
