Mandatory Digital ID

Ian Murray Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Digital Government and Data (Ian Murray)]

It is, as always, a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) for his speech. It was a very good speech, but suffered from the big disadvantage of none of it being actually accurate in terms of what the policy is and what digital ID is supposed to be about.

Let me start by saying—I mean this seriously and I mean it passionately in my defence of Parliament and Government—that it is okay to debate these things. There is a huge number of people in Westminster Hall today who want to debate this subject. An hour may not be enough, and no doubt we will come back to these issues on several occasions. But there is something that is really important. There is a real task for us all to do as custodians of democracy, which is to have this debate from the perspective of the facts that are out there and not to peddle myths.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur) said clearly in an intervention that all we have heard is the myths. I hope I can bust some of those myths to give comfort to some of our constituents that this scheme is not what is being portrayed by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire and what we have heard in many of the contributions. We have a real responsibility to make sure that we have proper debates—with the facts, not with what we read on social media.

[Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)]

The Minister says that we are “custodians of democracy”. On the back of that, and in the light of his comments, I ask this: will the Government commit to a direct vote in the House, a free vote on the digital ID scheme before it is rolled out and becomes mandatory in any form? The public and their elected representatives deserve clarity and choice.

[Ian Murray]

A full consultation will be launched by the end of this year. There are two options that the Government could have taken. We could have started from the position of a fully fledged programme, a fully fledged policy, and then taken that out to consultation; or we could take the approach that we are doing at the moment, which is to go out to consultation after we have had some initial consultation with people, so that the formal consultation is shaped by people’s views and the concerns that they raise.

I will give two examples, which are from the island of Ireland and from Northern Ireland and in terms of the common travel area and the Good Friday agreement. These are things that have to be resolved. We now know they are big issues, and that will go into the consultation to try to resolve them. We cannot have it both ways. We have chosen to take this particular approach in order to develop a consultation—

[Martin Wrigley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ian Murray]

Let me make some progress and I will give way. I want to read Members this paragraph:

“We will develop and establish a trusted and secure service for users to prove who they are, and that they are eligible for a service. Users will be able to store their information and choose to share it when applying to public services. This will improve a user’s access to services by providing a safe and secure way to prove their identity, while reducing time and cost for the public sector. Additionally, we will develop an inclusive approach for all users to ensure that…services are available for”

all, particularly those who are digitally excluded. That is from the Scottish Government in 2021. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire’s own party as the Scottish Government is developing this; it is actually SNP policy.

Let me just bust some of the myths. This is not a Brit card. I know that members of the SNP like to call it a Brit card, because that is what gives them traction in the way in which they constitutionally do these things, but it is not a Brit card. And let me just deal with the issue about compulsion and mandation, because everyone stands up and calls this mandatory digital ID. It is not mandatory. That is the wrong thing to say to our constituents. It is not compulsory in this country to have a passport, but one is mandatory to travel. If someone wants to travel on a flight, even an internal flight, in this country, they require that ID to be able to travel. It is not compulsory to hold a passport, but it is mandatory to use one for travel. It is exactly the same in this particular instance. It is not compulsory to have one. People will not be asked to show it; they will not be asked to produce it. There is a whole host of use cases that would be voluntary—

[Graham Leadbitter]

The Prime Minister said that this was mandatory if people wanted to work in the UK, so for every single person who wants to work in the UK it is mandatory. Is that not pretty much a compulsory ID card?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray]

No, it is not. I cannot remember which hon. Gentleman made the point about over-75s not being digitally excluded. I do not know many over-75s who are looking for work, so if they do not want to have this, they do not need to have it. And for people who are particularly challenged in terms of mental capacity or otherwise, there will be a different system—

[Peter Fortune]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ian Murray]

Let me finish the first point. There will be available a system that is non-digital for people to use in those particular circumstances. In terms of the way the law works now, it is illegal for an employer to employ someone who does not have the right to work in this country. There is already a process for people to use passports or driving licences to prove their identification. If the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) wants his passport or driving licence held in some dusty filing cabinet and photocopied 400 times, rather than just proving his right to work in this country on his digital ID, I would suggest that that is less secure than having it on a smartphone.

[Jim Shannon]

How will the Minister and the Government react to the united political opposition from both sides of the community in Northern Ireland, nationalist and Unionist, to the ID card? How can the Minister and the Government pursue something that is so unanimously opposed by everyone in Northern Ireland?

[Ian Murray]

Let me address that point directly. I have already been to Northern Ireland and spoken to all parties in the Northern Ireland Executive, and I have also been to the Republic to speak to the Irish Government about the processes that they have. In fact, they are about to introduce a similar scheme, because all EU countries have to have a scheme up and running by 2026. We fully understand the Good Friday agreement, the common travel area and nationality in Northern Ireland—that people can be British, Irish or both—and that will all have to be built into the system. As a Government, we have taken on board those legitimate concerns—not the myths. I have heard them directly from all parties in Northern Ireland, and we will ensure that those are resolved as part of the process. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join us in the consultation to make sure that those are resolved.

[Martin Wrigley]

It is not much of a consultation if the Government have already said, very vocally, that they are going to do it. It is really a question of how hard they want to beat people.

[Ian Murray]

Of course it is a consultation. It is about how we get this right, what it looks like, how it is built, how federated data is secured, how we deal with digital inclusion and how we deal with the issues in Northern Ireland. That is what the consultation is about. It is about the Government learning from that. [Interruption.] Liberal Democrat Members are heckling from a sedentary position, but their own leader, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), said on 21 September that “times have changed”, and that he had been impressed by a visit to Estonia, where a liberal Government had brought in digital ID. He said that if a system was

“giving individuals power to access public services”,

he could be in favour. Four days later, he said that

“the Liberal Democrats will fight against it tooth and nail”.

It is the same hypocrisy as the Scottish National party; it was their policy five days before they came out against it.

[Victoria Collins]

I would just highlight that what was stated was about the system being voluntary and about choice. We are saying that a mandatory system is a problem. Do this Government want to grow this economy or not? Do they want to give people who want to work a real choice? I do not see that at all.

[Ian Murray]

This is about reconnecting citizens with Government. Everyone will have constituents coming to every one of their surgeries with a form they cannot fill out, a piece of maladministration in public services, something they cannot access or a difficulty in getting access to benefits. There are still people in this country who are entitled to huge parts of the benefit system but do not claim. There are people who will need this for verification of identity and their age in buying alcohol—all those things that are a big inconvenience for people. This is about reconnecting citizens with Government—modernising government, as we have heard from the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer). It is about making sure that the Government can be effective and can be in the digital age with a digital population. This happens in many other countries around the world. I do not have time to run through all of them now, but hon. Members can look them up.

Let me take on two issues before I finish. The first is data and security. This is a federated data system, so I say to the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) that his idea of bringing it all together in one database is the wrong option. The data does not move; it sits with the Government Department, and the digital ID system, or whatever system is used, goes into those datasets and brings out affirmative or otherwise—

[Iqbal Mohamed]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ian Murray]

I do not have time.

The system brings out affirmative or otherwise information in relation to the specific information that the system requires. Having one central database is the wrong approach; there would be security issues. The dataset is federated, and does not move from the home Departments. The system reaches in to get the data it requires and bring it into what it needs to do to answer the questions.

I fully understand the points made about digital inclusion; we all do. Governments have been talking about digital inclusion for far too long, and this is an opportunity to sort it once and for all. Where digital ID has been introduced, those in the most deprived communities, furthest away from Government services, have got the best access to them. Those who would not have had access before and geographically isolated communities, like those represented in Scotland by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, have been connected the quickest and have had the greatest use from the connection to Government services.

The myths about digital inclusion, about safety and security, about the ID being called a Britcard, and about it being mandatory are not the case in terms of the policy. I look forward to everyone inputting into the consultation and the Government bringing forward the legislation in due course.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of mandatory digital ID.