Not long ago I published an article outlining what the UK’s proposed Digital ID scheme could mean for privacy, data protection, and everyday life in Britain – What You Need To Know About The UK’s New Digital ID.
I felt that concerned as a national identity systems are potentially one of the easiest things a government can get wrong, and one of the hardest things to fix once the foundations are in place.
Since then, the Government has effectively backed away from the most controversial aspect of the plan; according to the BBC, ministers have now stepped back from the expectation that workers would be required to register for a new digital ID scheme in order to prove their right to work. A shift that, however it’s dressed up; is clearly a response to public discomfort and political pressure.
This is being framed as a sensible change of direction; but it doesn’t feel sensible, it feels late and it feels reactive. It also raises a bigger question that shouldn’t be brushed aside: How did we get this far into a proposal that was never likely to survive contact with the public?
A U-turn isn’t automatically a bad thing; sometimes it means government has listened, reflected, and corrected course.
But this wasn’t that; this was a messy rollout, followed by muddled explanations, followed by a hurried step backwards once it became clear the political cost was climbing. It looked far less like responsive policymaking and far more like another case of a major digital programme being pushed forward before the hard questions had been properly answered.
At various points, Digital ID was sold as a way to modernise public services; at other points, it was pitched as an answer to illegal working. For many people watching from the outside, it quickly began to feel like a gateway requirement; something that would gradually become unavoidable if you wanted to work, rent, or engage with parts of the state.
That’s the fundamental problem with the way this was handled; you cannot casually propose mandatory digital identity and then “clarify” later. Once compulsion enters the conversation, people stop hearing “convenience” and start hearing “control”. Once you tie identity to everyday access, people stop hearing “security” and start hearing “surveillance”.
Once trust is lost, no amount of reassurance brings it back quickly; The public didn’t reject technology – they rejected being forced!
A lot of commentary around this issue slips into a lazy argument; which is that people oppose Digital ID because they don’t understand it, or because they’re resistant to modern life and that’s simply not true.
People use digital services constantly i.e. Banking, shopping, government portals, mobile payments, NHS systems – The public isn’t “anti-digital”!
What people reacted against was the idea of being pushed into a new mandatory identity mechanism that could easily expand beyond its original purpose; because the concern isn’t just what it is today – it’s what it becomes tomorrow!
The moment something like this is framed as compulsory, the public starts asking uncomfortable but completely reasonable questions:
- Where does the data go?
- Who controls it?
- How is it protected?
- What happens when it fails?
- What happens when someone can’t access it?
- What stops it being used for something else in two years’ time?
…and this is where the Government’s handling fell apart; it didn’t prepare the ground, it didn’t build public confidence and it pushed ahead and hoped objections would soften later.
The real scandal is how much public money has already gone into this vision; digital identity in the UK has been circling for years. Different governments, different slogans, different rebrands; but the same underlying ambition i.e. a unified identity mechanism that makes verification easier and state systems more joined up.
Even in the quieter years where compulsory ID wasn’t actively on the table, the background work continued; frameworks, teams, pilots, procurement exercises, consultancy spend, policy development, certification schemes, integration work – all of it adds up.
Some of those pieces may still be useful in isolation; but the wider point matters far more as a huge amount of taxpayer-funded time and effort has been poured into something that was always going to be politically fragile and publicly unpopular.
This is the cycle we keep repeating in UK public-sector technology; a long build-up behind the scenes, a big confident announcement, a wave of backlash, a retreat and then; eventually, another relaunch under a slightly different name.
It’s not just inefficient, it’s corrosive; because every time the Government makes mistakes like this, it doesn’t merely waste money, it erodes confidence in their ability to handle large-scale digital systems responsibly.
Even if you accept the argument that Britain needs smoother identity verification in some areas, tying Digital ID to right-to-work checks was always going to trigger public suspicion; it instantly linked the scheme with immigration enforcement and control. Whether that was the intention or not, that’s the public perception it created, and it should have been obvious that it would.
It also created a deeper fear that employment would become conditional on participation in a government identity system and that’s not a technical policy discussion; that’s a rights-based one.
If you want Digital ID to be accepted, you don’t launch it as a gatekeeper to someone’s livelihood and you don’t introduce it through fear or enforcement. You build confidence slowly, through voluntary use and clearly limited scope. Instead, we got urgency first, clarity later, and now somewhat predictably, retreat.
The most frustrating part of this episode is that the retreat doesn’t feel clean or transparent; it feels like the Government is trying to reduce backlash without ever fully owning what went wrong. There hasn’t been a clear admission that the approach was flawed and there hasn’t been a clear explanation of what exactly has been stopped, what remains in place, what is still being developed, and what the boundaries now are.
The longer those details remain vague, the more people will assume the worst; that compulsory Digital ID hasn’t died, it’s simply been postponed until the next political opportunity and that’s how distrust becomes permanent. If the Government wants to salvage anything from this; it needs to stop treating Digital ID as a political trophy and start treating it as what it really is, high-risk national infrastructure.
That means:
- Publishing clear limits on scope and purpose, in plain English.
- Accounting transparently for money spent and expected costs going forward.
- Genuinely engaging privacy organisations and civil society before major announcements.
- Ensuring strong non-digital alternatives exist, not just vague promises.
Most importantly, it needs to accept that consent matters.
Digital identity can exist in the UK without becoming coercive and it can be built in a way that supports privacy rather than undermining it; but it cannot succeed when government tries to impose it first and explain it afterwards.
This U-turn was predictable and the only question now is whether anything is learned from it; or whether we’re simply waiting for the next rebrand.
Sources:
- Stu Walsh – What You Need To Know About The UK’s New Digital ID
- BBC News – Government Backtracks On UK Digital ID Proposal
- The Verge – UK digital ID plans will no longer be mandatory
- Computer Weekly – UK government backtracks on plans for mandatory digital ID
- The Register – UK backtracks on digital ID requirement for right to work
- Computing – Government backtracks on digital ID
- The Guardian – Government rolls back key part of digital identity card plans
- The Guardian – Rachel Reeves “pretty relaxed” about what form of digital ID workers use
- GOV.UK – UK digital identity and attributes trust framework
- GOV.UK – New digital ID scheme to be rolled out across UK
- UK Parliament – Home Affairs Committee inquiry: Harnessing the potential of new digital forms of identification
- NCSC Annual Review – The future of digital identity
