The upcoming ID Cards Consultation 

In the announcement of ‘digital ID cards’ that they claimed would prevent illegal migration, the Government also announced a consultation to cover a range of other topics, including the age range and aspects of life to which ID could inexorably extend.

Of course, the National Digital Identity Programme is intended to expand to all of those anyway – Blair’s vision has waited two decades so far; he can be patient and kick the more unpopular parts down the road until after it has been established. And, given the way it was initially announced, it is possible the digital ID consultation may be more about how to get ‘everyone on’ to the system rather than consulting on substantive details of the programme.

A good consultation would have meaningful questions on consequential issues, such as these:

With the White Paper that Labour Together called for seemingly abandoned, the consultation is likely to be broad – as it should be – and our answers page will cover a range of these and other topics. (Hopefully NO2ID will win the race to put up some of the answers before HMG can publish the questions; donations will really help in this regard.)

What decisions can be made by those aged 13-16?

The first topic Blair’s scheme supported for consultation was expanding digital ID and the database behind them to all those aged 13 and over, i.e. everyone who can legally click OK to accept online terms and conditions. Government digital ID could then be used for online Age Verification, destroying the private sector Age Verification industry in the process – not to mention creating a permanent government record of your fetish interests ‘age verified habits’… 

While nationalising and replacing a flawed and sometimes predatory private scheme with a predatory and flawed public scheme may be Change, it is not necessarily Progress.

Young people live in the digital world; more than most adults, they are ‘native’ to it. As they grow up, they need to be able to make decisions – some of which will be unwise or unsafe – and to learn from their mistakes. Far more unwise and unsafe, though, would be to give this (and every future) Government a persistent dossier of those mistakes you made as a child… 

Will the card describe the holder’s genitals?

Many reasons will be given for the ID scheme, given its power to influence behaviour. Some will attempt to pressure the Government on specific aspects of ID that fit their agenda.

One current issue in public debate is whether people should be required to show ID relating to their genitalia in order to access certain public or private spaces, including private toilets. Given this widespread and ongoing debate – including in Parliament – the consultation should outline the Government’s expectations for what the digital ID card will do in this regard, and seek public views on that position.

Does HMG see this as ‘England plus 3 nations’ or something else?

“BritCard” was TBI and friends’ original branding, though this was quickly dropped when Scotland and Northern Ireland expressed their views. Scotland already has a ‘ScotCard’, with quite a long history – but a think tank in London doesn’t care much about that.

This will be the Whitehall database to do with as Ministers decide, and when Westminster decrees how it will work, that is how they will expect it to work. Both big ‘G’ and small ‘g’ government want the levers of power to be connected to their databases which contain, control and monitor your personal data.

Whether the Black App and the underlying infrastructure of digital ID will serve the citizens of all four nations equally is a matter of import.

What will this mean for scope creep of the Black App?

Of course there is no such thing as a “digital ID card”. In practice, the government’s ID scheme will be imposed by issuing you with a digital ID ‘credential’ – which, by default, you will be expected to keep in the Black App on your phone – and then mandating that you use it for an ever-increasing list of purposes.

The first (and thus far only) purpose the Government has committed to is ‘Right to Work’ checks, i.e. your ability to earn a living – but Home Office ‘Right to Rent’ checks will almost certainly follow, i.e. your ability to secure a place to live. Other checks will follow. And every time you use your digital ID, the Black App will dial home to report what you have done to the tracking database at the heart of the system.

(That digital ID will not be compulsory is a canard. While there may initially be other ways to prove your ‘entitlements’, many will find they effectively have no choice but to comply – while others will do so willingly, having bought into government’s “convenience” line… until the political winds shift and convenience ends.) 

How will the Programme interact with the NHS?

The NHS already knows you are entitled to free treatment, but it still makes you prove it because the Department of Health and NHS England don’t trust hospitals, and hospitals don’t trust DH and NHSE’s databases.

More databases won’t help, of course – but they and your single digital ‘identifier’ will allow your health data to be linked to your taxes, your DWP and other government-held data, so potentially life-altering decisions about you can be made in one Department…

Your medical history is confidential and can contain highly sensitive information about you; there are good reasons why ‘secondary uses’ of it across government have been prohibited throughout the entire lifetime of the NHS. 

Mr Streeting’s and the Blair government-in-exile’s current and longer term plans to break down this safety barrier demand very close scrutiny. 

What will the new ID Cards Bill do?

The consultation will need to address whether primary legislation will prevent the ID database being moved to the Home Office under a(nother) Machinery of Government change. Else all it would take to make this a Home Office database – the direct analogue of Blair’s previous National Identity Register – is the swish of a Whitehall pen.

Parliamentary rules require that any Bill which starts in the Lords does not spend money; only the Commons can decide that. If the Government decides to start its new ID Cards Bill in the Lords, with one contradictory statement included on the face of it, how can people have confidence that other potentially more consequential promises will not also be broken?

Given that a policy as significant and as specific as introducing digital ID cards was not in Labour’s manifesto, will anything appear in the legislation that is not in the consultation?

Will any data held by one part of government be sharable via the ID to any other?

When the Government argues that the Black App will hold the credential for your passport (and passport number), your driving licence and tax affairs (e.g. Self Assessment number), and your pension contributions (via your NI number), exactly how and in what circumstances will all of these linkages be used by others across government?

The ID database will be tracking every use of your digital ID – every job you apply for, every ID verification you are required to make. Responding to 3 million people who signed a petition, the Government said its digital ID system was about “putting more control in their hands (including over their own data)”. Control over your own data means knowing how and when it is used. So when it hands powers to a whole host of officials and others to check your ‘digital validity’, will government also compel them to give you a receipt?

Just as importantly – and possibly more so – will everyone be able to see exactly when their record has been accessed across government?

Who will end up in control of the database?

The recent ‘machinery of government’ (MoG) change puts the Cabinet Office in charge of the National Digital Identity Programme… for now. But – aside from responsibility to deliver the Government’s strategic goals – CO’s primary function is to facilitate both access to and use of information across government, rather than running public-facing databases itself.

Given its historic ID ambitions, Blair thinking, and the first purposes for which digital ID is intended, it would be no surprise if the Secretive, Invasive and Nasty Home Office ends up in control of the ID database. 

The consultation must therefore consider whether primary legislation will prevent the database being moved to the Home Office under another machinery of government change. Else all it would take to make this a HO database is the swish of a Whitehall pen.

The plans of Blair’s government-in-exile are already falling apart 

Coverage of people aged 13-16 was the first issue that the Starmer Government backed away from – what was front and centre in its initial briefings is now just an ‘option’ for the consultation. The Starmer Government is clearly less monomaniacally committed than Blair and his acolytes, even if his followers in Government seem to have forgotten who their Prime Minister is. (Or possibly their loyalty lies with the next PM over this one…)

The Blair administration has had years in exile to devise schemes with those who stand to gain from more ID and more databases. It is only now that their thinking is being tested, as the Starmer Government decides which parts of it can work and which are too toxic for even a mid-2020s Labour government to support. 

You can help

The AI obsessed Government will likely feed all of the consultation responses to an AI, to summarise and save humans the effort of reading them. Prompt injections do however work. Hopefully they are not as naïve as they appear to be about the obvious flaws in their technological utopia. (We hope…)

The consultation is likely to be broad – as it should be – and our answers page will cover a range of these and other topics. (Hopefully NO2ID will win the race to put up some of the answers before HMG can publish the questions; donations will really help in this regard.)

More posts