At the behest of Big Brother Watch, I have written to my MP asking her to attend the parliamentary debate on the petition to block the introduction of digital identity card scheme.
"Dear Layla,
I am writing, as your constituent, to urge you to attend the December 8th petition debate to represent my opposition to the government’s plans for a mandatory digital ID scheme. As you know, the Liberal Democrats have, historically, opposed national identity card schemes and abolished the previous Labour government national identity card when joining in a coalition government with the Conservative party in 2010.
Almost three million people have signed the petition, making it the fourth largest Parliamentary petition recorded. The scale of the response is not a surprise. Millions of people have well-grounded concerns that a mandatory digital ID scheme will pose a threat to privacy, upending our relationship to the state, and make British residents even more attractive targets for hacking by foreign adversaries and criminals. It is critical that the government hears these concerns at the upcoming debate.
The government initially pitched the digital ID scheme as a means to check work eligibility. But since the scheme’s announcement multiple ministers and members of Parliament have made it clear that the initial roll out of the digital ID will merely be the first step in a wider plan to, in the words of Minister for Intergovernmental Relations, Darren Jones, “shut down the legacy state”. Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, Josh Macalister, has stated the “first use case for it is around right to work checks… we’re not saying we’re going to boil the ocean in one go because the public would be really sceptical of that, so we’re starting with this issue of right to work checks first but there are loads of other applications for digital ID.” The planned mission creep is not even being hidden any more – they are boasting about it.
There is no guarantee that this or indeed a future government would not make digital ID a requirement to access a range of public and private services – including healthcare, education, childcare, tax payments and accessing age-restricted services. A digital ID system will last far beyond this government, meaning that we risk building the mass surveillance infrastructure for a less rights-respecting future administration.
A sprawling digital ID system represents a serious threat to privacy. A mandatory digital ID scheme will gather and store information about us. Each time an individual uses their digital ID, that use may be recorded in government databases, allowing the vast amounts of information to be amassed, searched, and sorted to offer insights through data analysis and profiling. The public should not be forced to bare their lives to the state just to help it administer itself.
The introduction of a mandatory digital ID scheme would fundamentally change the relationship between the population and the state, shifting power away from individuals and towards the government. We currently operate in a system where we can prove our identity as and when we need to with a variety of methods. Mandatory digital ID would turn that dynamic on its head by creating a society on licence, where we might soon need permission every time we interact with the state.
Mandatory digital ID would put the population’s personal data at unprecedented risk of data breaches by creating a honey pot for hackers and foreign adversaries. In the past year, breaches of the legal aid database and Afghans relocating to the UK have resulted in the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people being leaked. The government’s OneLogin system is also reported to be susceptible to impersonation.
A mandatory digital ID scheme will not solve the problems its proponents claim it will and all the usual excuses for it have been rolled out – right to work checks, stop the boats, smash the gangs, halt benefit fraud, border control and multiple variations on tackling the four horsemen of the infocalypse i.e. child abusers, terrorists, organised crime and narcotics cartels. The government, this time, proposed the scheme as a means to crack down on illegal hiring practices,"tackle illegal migration, make accessing government services easier, and enable wider efficiencies." If we have learned anything from the first quarter of the 21st century, it is that building and deploying infrastructures of mass surveillance does not solve these problems.
The government has not presented a convincing argument that a mandatory digital ID scheme, which will inevitably cost billions of pounds, will persuade criminals who already break employment and immigration law to change their behaviour. In the end, it will be law-abiding people who suffer the effects of digital ID through privacy intrusions and security risks.
One final point that might be worth making is that the digital ID scheme is being pushed heavily by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. This “institute” has received huge sums of money from economic actors who stand to benefit significantly from contracts to build and operate the scheme. It reminds us to think of the five questions of a different Tony, Tony Benn –
- What power have you got?
- Where did you get it from?
- In whose interests do you exercise it?
- To whom are you accountable?
- How do we get rid of you?
Of particular importance in this context are questions 3 & 4.
The infrastructure of mass surveillance that constitutes the modern internet has been repeatedly exploited, by state, criminal and economic actors, to perpetrate widespread abuse, from basic privacy invasion to, tragically, the targeting of innocents for bombing. Another state run digital ID surveillance system will only expand that capacity for abuse. If you build it, they will come – powerful abusers of all stripes, some even believing themselves to be well-intentioned, convinced of their own righteousness – and once deployed mass surveillance infrastructure is incredibly difficult to combat, control or decommission. Please stand in defence of civil liberties, attend the December 8th debate, and articulate the dangers associated with a mandatory government digital ID scheme.
Kind regards,
Ray"
Update, 4/12'25: I got a response from Liberal Democrat MP, Layla Moran. They agree with the concerns raised and have launched their own No to Labour's Digital ID Cards petition.
"Dear Ray
Thank you for taking the time to write regarding the Government’s proposals for compulsory digital ID. Unfortunately, due to previously arranged commitments, I will be unable to attend the petitions debate on December 8th. However, please rest assured that I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues share your concerns entirely.
The Liberal Democrats are clear that a mandatory digital ID system would cross a red line. It risks eroding long-held civil liberties while doing little to address the Government’s stated aims of immigration enforcement.
We share concerns that a mandatory digital ID system threatens our right to privacy. Digital tools should be about giving individuals more control over their personal data, not giving the government more control over our lives.
We are also concerned that a mandatory Digital ID system could deepen digital exclusion and disproportionately affect society’s most marginalised- older people, people living in poverty and disabled people who often have limited access to digital devices or low digital literacy.
This scheme is set to cost the taxpayer billions. If the government really wants to restore public trust in the immigration system, it could spend this money on Nightingale processing centres, as the Liberal Democrats have called for, to clear the asylum backlog, and still have lots left over to improve public services.
The British public has consistently rejected mandatory ID proposals over the decades, and the Liberal Democrats are proud to have led the charge on this against Tony Blair’s government in the 2000s. We once again stand ready to oppose Labour’s push for mandatory ID cards.
The Liberal Democrats have launched a petition to show the government the strength of public opposition to these plans. You can add your name here.
Thank you once again for taking the time to write.Best wishes,
Layla"
