Protect the Right to Live Without a Digital ID

I want a legal safeguard in all digital-ID laws that guarantees no one can be denied work, healthcare, banking, housing, or any other service for not having a government digital ID. Use must remain voluntary, and non-digital alternatives must always be available to prevent exclusion or pressure..

Without legal protections, a voluntary digital ID system could become coercive if access to services or participation in daily life depends on it. There is currently no explicit legal safeguard to prevent digital ID from being over-relied on by either public or private organisations. Digital ID systems can shape access not only to essential services but also wider participation in society. Legal protections could ensure that people can choose without facing disadvantage or indirect compulsion.

The Government has announced that it will offer a new national Digital ID system, free to access for anyone who wants it by the end of the Parliament. The use of Digital ID will be optional and there are no plans to change that.

On 10 March we launched a comprehensive consultation about the design of the Digital ID scheme, which will be open until 5 May. The consultation asks about how we can make the Digital ID a secure, convenient way for people to prove who they are. This will help the government reduce bureaucracy and build the intuitive, efficient, and responsive public services the UK deserves.

Following the consultation we will lead a national conversation about how Digital ID and digital tools can be used to make public services work better for you and to support innovation. The digitisation of government services by some estimates could save up to billions of pounds a year. Supermarkets, banks, retail companies have all chosen to move their services online to a greater degree because they believe it delivers better customer experience, and also because it provides better value for money.

More digital public services will also make them more efficient - because the status quo is expensive. There are costs of processing lots of paper forms, lots of manual payment systems, lots of duplication - every time you have to repeat your story to a different part of the state that’s a second, third or fourth cost to the taxpayer. The numbers across government are huge - the DVLA currently processes 45,000 letters a day, Defra uses 500 different paper forms, HMRC handles 100,000 phone calls a day.