Digital ID

Robbie Moore Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 730194 relating to digital ID.

It is a pleasure to introduce today’s e-petition debate under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to open it on behalf of the Petitions Committee. I thank all the organisations and individuals I have met in preparation for the debate.

Nearly 3 million people have signed today’s petition. It is the fourth most signed petition in the history of parliamentary e-petitions, comparable only to the recent petitions calling for a general election. It is obvious why the plans to bring in digital ID have provoked such outrage: they are fundamentally un-British and they strike at the core political traditions of this country. Colleagues of all parties are opposed to these measures: the Conservatives, the Greens, Reform, Lib Dems, Labour Back Benchers, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, independent MPs and colleagues from Northern Ireland. In fact, even several Ministers in this Government have, in the past, voiced their opposition to compulsory identity documents.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

For the avoidance of doubt, I am on this side of the Westminster Hall Chamber only because it is so packed that this was the only remaining chair. I have not defected to the Labour Party and I never will—nor to anyone else. Can my hon. Friend confirm that this policy was not in Labour’s general election manifesto, so it has absolutely no electoral mandate to extend the surveillance state over the people of this country with this gimmick?

[Robbie Moore]

I cannot agree enough. It raises the question: who is actually in favour of these proposals, other than the Prime Minister?

Despite the consistent opposition to identity documents, this is not the first time that they have been forced on the British public. The first ID card in this country came during the second world war: police officers could demand of the public that they show their cards and they were subject to six months’ imprisonment if they did not. Despite promises in 1939 that the ID cards would be a temporary wartime measure, they were used throughout the post-war Attlee Government; they were ended only by the Conservatives in 1952. Some 50 years later, no longer fighting German spies but the war on terror, the Blair Government tried to bring ID cards back, and they succeeded. Once again, it took the Conservative Government—this time in coalition with the Lib Dems—to stop them.

Sadly, the Conservatives are not wholly innocent either when it comes to ID. In 2021, the Government introduced the first digital ID in the form of the covid passport, which I proudly voted against. Thankfully, those documents lasted only a short while before restrictions were lifted. That brings us to the modern day and the latest excuse for ID cards: tackling illegal immigration and delivering Government services.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I will keep my intervention very short, Sir Edward. An unheard-of 4,400 of my constituents signed this petition. They are very clear that they do not want the imposition—which is what it will be—of digital ID. As we heard from my hon. Friend’s history lesson, time and again it has been the Conservatives who have said, “No, we do not want this. The British people do not want it.” Is it not time that this Government sat up and listened to the public for a change?

[Robbie Moore]

That is exactly why this Conservative party is saying no to digital ID once again. The latest guesstimate of how much this is going to cost us all is a whopping £1.8 billion.

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

My hon. Friend articulates the case powerfully. I know my constituents will agree that we could be doing much better things with £1.8 billion than wasting it on a project like this.

[Robbie Moore]

I entirely agree, but here we are with the latest Government excuse to introduce mandatory digital ID. I can just see the communication advisers in No. 10 looking at today’s polling, dusting off the old ID card plan and slapping “Stop the boats” on the cover. There is no doubt in my mind that if the No. 1 issue of today had been tackling potholes, the very same press release would have come out of No. 10 claiming that digital ID is now the essential solution to tackling the national problem of potholes. I say that in jest, but to point out that it seems that any excuse—however unjustified and unevidenced—will do to push policy through.

[Dame Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Robbie Moore]

I give way to the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee.

[Dame Chi Onwurah]

There are many who seek the right and the ability to identify themselves, but who do not have it as it stands. We all have constituents who are experiencing that. My Committee has seen evidence that the figure cited by the hon. Gentleman is not recognised by the Secretary of State; it has been put forward by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The Secretary of State will be writing to us to set out what costs she envisages and when they will be realised. It is also important to recognise that the level of digital hygiene across Government is not such that it could support a mandatory digital ID scheme, in my view.

[Robbie Moore]

Therein lies the explanation and the reason why so many Members of this House are opposed to the plans brought forward by the Prime Minister.

Here is the question that the Government hope nobody will ask: if the real target is people who are here illegally, why on earth do 67 million British citizens who already have national insurance numbers, passports, driving licences and birth certificates need to be dragged into a brand-new compulsory database as well? What exactly is it about stopping the crisis of inflatable dinghies in the channel that requires your son, your daughter, your dad or your 90-year-old grandma to hand over their data and facial geometry to the Home Office server?

[Dr Neil Hudson (Epping Forest) (Con)]

My constituents in Epping Forest are deeply concerned about the prospect of digital ID cards. Many have written and spoken to me, and over 5,600 have signed the petition. Rather than improving the delivery of public services, this scheme risks wasting billions on a complex, intrusive and potentially very insecure system that will not help anyone. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Labour Government must now listen, take on board the public concerns and scrap this flawed policy?

[Robbie Moore]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is not about stopping the boats at all; it is about more Government and state control.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Sarah Gibson (Chippenham) (LD)]

I will be very brief. My constituency is in rural Wiltshire, where a huge number of residents have taken part in this petition. Does the hon. Member agree that digital exclusion is a reality in areas like mine?

[Robbie Moore]

I absolutely agree that digital exclusion is a reality for all.

I ask everyone in this place and those watching at home, no matter their political persuasion, to imagine their worst ever Government: the one that keeps them awake at night and that they would march against in the streets. For many, I am sure that that will be this Government, but for some it may have been previous Governments. This single piece of digital infrastructure will hand that Government, whoever they may be, the key to our life. Once that digital infrastructure is set up, we cannot go back. Once digital ID comes into force, no political party can promise that its intentions will stay good forever. Put simply, an ID card gives the state permanent control, and I say no.

The slippery slope argument is so common in debates about civil liberties that it is almost a cliché, but once the digital identities infrastructure is in place, it will become so much harder for a well-meaning Minister to resist the idea that they can fix areas of public policy by tracking and controlling, at an ever finer level, how a population behaves.

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

We have a Government who could not even keep their own Budget under wraps. What hope do they have with our personal data?

[Robbie Moore]

That is exactly what a constituent of mine emailed me about—a constituent who voted Labour in 2024. They said, “If they can’t even control the leakage from the Government, how on earth can they control our data?”

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

Like many Members, I have been inundated with messages. My Hartlepool constituents are hugely concerned. Does the hon. Member agree that part of the problem is that we got an announcement without the detail? I have written to the Minister with a number of questions that my constituents have put to me. Does the hon. Member think that Government Ministers owe our constituents answers about the detail of what they are proposing?

[Robbie Moore]

I could not agree more, but I suspect that the Minister will come out and reiterate the lines from the Prime Minister that he was given before the debate.

Just look at the social credit system in China. Facial recognition linked to ID penalises people. Blacklisted citizens cannot buy train or plane tickets, book hotels or apply for certain jobs. This Government have already indicated that migration work and renting will be tied to ID, but how long will it be before future Governments push further and accessing state services is brought under the control and monitoring of digital ID?

We are already seeing signs of such a framework in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, the Online Safety Act 2023 and the One Login system. Combined with a formal digital ID, those frameworks would create a world of control for Whitehall and a soulless dystopia for the rest of us. Together, they replace the honesty and decency of human-to-human interaction with an opaque, mechanical “computer says no” future. The scary truth is that control and ID cards hold an appeal for anyone who has access to power. It takes a conscious effort by every one of us to resist the temptation. Power does corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if bad employers are not prevented from taking people on without national insurance numbers or passports, they will not stop at taking someone on without digital ID?

[Robbie Moore]

I agree. The attitude of control strikes at the very heart of our political traditions. We are a representative democracy, not a command-and-control state. A Government exist by the will of the people, not the other way round. Put simply, we are not a “papers, please” society.

One of the most terrifying elements of the Government’s proposals is that these IDs are to be digital. The national database on which our identities are to be held is a true honeypot for hackers all over the world. To those who say that it will be secure, I say, “Name me a company or Government body that has not had a hacking crisis in recent years.” The NHS, the Co-op, Jaguar Land Rover—I could go on. Even Estonia’s Government lost 280,000 digital ID photos in 2021.

[Cameron Thomas (Tewkesbury) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concerns that the scheme could put constituents’ most sensitive data into the hands of private, perhaps overseas, individuals who might have neither our constituents’ nor our country’s interests at heart?

[Robbie Moore]

I completely agree. In the case of One Login, cyber-security specialists were able to infiltrate and potentially alter the underlying code without being noticed by the team working on the project. In fact, the existing system could be compromised as we speak. We are assured by advocates of digital ID that clever technology will protect the data, but as I have outlined, the temptation to further integrate data within the system will be extremely strong. How long before someone suggests that security features be removed to make the system more efficient?

Digital data brings me back to consent. I will finish on this point: digital ID is an ever more intrusive evolution of traditional ID cards—one that promises to be more oppressive. Coupled with the powers of digital databases, increasing widespread facial recognition, digitalised public services and the looming prospect of a central bank’s digital currencies, digital ID threatens to create an all-encompassing digital surveillance state that even George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” could not predict. In every aspect of public life, we give over our data with consent. Yet digital ID turns that notion on its head, insisting that we hand over data to simply function in society, and potentially for reasons to which we cannot consent in advance.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. Does he agree that this is just the latest example of this Labour Government trying to push through something that was not in their manifesto, and that this House must therefore do all it can to stop it becoming a reality?

[Robbie Moore]

I absolutely agree. Who else but the Prime Minister really wants to drive this through? If the Government expand the scope of digital ID after its initial implementation, I doubt that they will be kind enough to offer an opt-out clause to anyone who has signed up. People up and down the country, 3 million of whom have signed the petition, can see that this scheme is a disaster waiting to happen.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

As the Chair of the Petitions Committee, I thank the hon. Member for his excellent speech. Three million signatures! I want to apologise to hon. Members for the fact that there is not enough space in this Chamber for everyone who has turned up. I thank them for turning up, and I think it poses a question for the House to settle in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robbie Moore]

I could not agree more. It shows the strength of feeling on this issue. Thousands of people are deeply offended by the intrusion on their civil liberties; thousands are sceptical about whether Whitehall will be able to pull off such a complex scheme; and thousands are digitally excluded, terrified of a “computer says no” future. The Government should give up now, because we on the other side of the debate will never give up.

Whether today’s identity cards are stopped before they are implemented or whether they last a few months, as they did in 2010, or over a decade, as they did in 1939, the British people will fight them, we will stop them and we will overturn them. As I said to the Government on the day they announced this policy, I am not a tin of beans and I do not need a barcode.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Robbie Moore]

There we have it. This is how the Government of the day is going to be engaging with people—stating from the Dispatch Box that they are willing to listen, yet not taking one intervention. May I remind the Minister that Members of Parliament in this House have been elected to represent their constituents? Three million people have signed this petition. Not to have taken one intervention when dealing with matters that have been brought to this House is not only embarrassing for the Minister, but completely discourteous to the Members of Parliament in this Chamber. What a disgrace!

Colleagues have spoken, and I thank Members who have spoken on behalf of their constituents. I also thank the 3 million people who signed the petition, because they have demonstrated that digital ID is not something that they want this country to move forward with. It is expensive, it is unwanted and it is intrusive. It was not included in the Labour party manifesto. It was not promoted as something that would be brought forward by this Government.

The voice of this Chamber has been heard. It is just incredibly disappointing that the Minister did not have the courtesy to reflect that in his remarks.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petition 730194 relating to digital ID.