How is ID not “mandatory” if they create you an account anyway?
In an attempt to ‘change the public mood’ before the Government begins consulting on its new ID scheme, “government sources” have briefed journalists that digital ID “will no longer be mandatory” for British citizens to prove their right to work in the UK.
All the Home Office Right to Work checks remain, as do Right to Rent and other mandatory checks – and while government has yet to write down the details of its new ‘digital ID card’, it is rolling ahead with digital versions of your passport and driving license, and an ever-expanding requirement to register for and (only) use One Login when accessing services.
Given how slavishly it mirrors the thinking of the Blair government-in-exile, the 2026 process is following a well-trodden path. In 2002, ID cards were first proposed as mandatory “entitlement cards” for access to services. Over the next four years, this evolved into the Blair Government’s supposedly “voluntary” ID card and National Identity Register, which you couldn’t avoid if you wanted a passport.
The ‘card’ this time may be a digital credential that sits on your phone, which you won’t be able to avoid if you want to use any government service once Government has “reimagined” the relationship between the citizen and the state.
While the headlines talk of a U-turn, the ID scheme that is already being rolled out includes “shadow” accounts which are created for everyone who doesn’t do their own identity verification for a One Login account. They are already doing this to company directors, they’re considering doing it for babies at birth and potentially for all children in school.
Number 10 may be trying to “scrape the barnacles off the boat”, and may even drop some of the most stupid bits that their favourite think tank got them to announce without thinking through implementation. Ministers announce things with a flourish; regrets and U-turns may follow. But don’t be fooled. The ID scheme isn’t dead yet, and government still hasn’t answered really basic questions about it – like whether they’ll force married women to change their names. If it’s one account per person in their database, all linked together, what will that name on that account be?
Ministers and officials can say different things about intent, but the underlying principle remains the same. The unchanged aspects of the ID programme continue to rewrite the relationship between citizen and state on Labour’s terms, replacing the UK’s proudly permissive culture – where one is free to act unless explicitly forbidden by law – with a ‘Papers Please’ regime of constant verification and oversight.
And unless cast iron guarantees are written on the face of primary legislation, Blair and his acolytes will keep coming back for more…
