Digital Identification Protocol

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 20th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend that this is a prize worth prioritising—although I cannot comment on the specific McKinsey data. On his question about areas for pilots, we are working with a number of sectors and are eager to look into pilots in healthcare, tourism, housing, conveyancing and insurance—but all of this is of course subject to spending review outcomes.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab) [V]]

It is increasingly important for all of us as citizens to be able to simply and securely verify our identity to others and, likewise, that we can always have confidence that the person with whom we are engaged in a transaction is who they say they are. Yet there have been 11 wasted years since the Government scrapped the previous proposals for a secure identity system. Why has there been that waste of time? Can the Minister assure us, the public, that our personal identity data will be secure and not exploited for profit by these new private sector solutions?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I cannot comment on the delay to which the noble Lord refers. What I can say is that we are working at pace and have made considerable progress since our response to the call for evidence in September. As he is aware—the clue is in the name—a fundamental of the “trust framework” is that citizens can trust how their digital ID will be used.