Verify: Digital Identity System

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Verify was started under the coalition Government—I think Nick Clegg was in charge of the Cabinet Office when it started—but there is a difference between providing a secure online identity, which Verify does, and an ID card which you have to carry with you. The key difference between Verify and an ID card system is that Verify is voluntary and the ID card was to be compulsory.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest, having worked in government with Nick Clegg on precisely that. I was very impressed by the Government Digital Service and frustrated by the extent to which departments across Whitehall resisted its moves to modernise government handling of data and abandon the separate legal frameworks under which departments manage and keep data. There was much discussion in the coalition Government about introducing a new Bill to update those rules to cope with rapidly moving technology. It has not yet appeared. Do the Government still have plans to do so?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Lord knows much more about this than I do. It is the case that HMRC has its own service, the Government Gateway. Since it developed that service, Verify has come along. Obviously one would like to migrate from Government Gateway to Verify and encourage other departments so to do. I am not wholly convinced that we need legislation to do that—I will go back to my department in the light of what the noble Lord said—but we need to win the hearts and minds of government departments and persuade them to make more services available on Verify. That impetus is, I hope, gathering momentum.