Mandatory Digital ID

Scott Arthur Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship once again, Mr Turner. I did not know I was so popular today. I am delighted to see so many colleagues joining us in this short debate. I warmly welcome the Minister to his new role. We were shocked and appalled by his unjustified defenestration at the Scotland Office. We were energetic supporters of the “get Ian a job—any job” campaign, so we are delighted to see him here in his rightful place today. It has to be asked, though: who has he upset in the last few weeks to be landed with this particular poisoned chalice? But here we go again. It has taken 20 years, but ID cards are back, this time in a shiny new digital format, turbocharged by all the new features of modern technology.

Tony Blair famously tried to introduce ID cards back in the 2000s before being forced to abandon them by a fantastic campaign by civil liberty campaigners, Members of this House, and the millions of ordinary UK citizens who simply refused to have ID cards foisted upon them. But they are back. Like a spectre from the political grave, ID cards are with us once again. It is just possible that Tony Blair might reach his ultimate aim and aspiration of getting ID cards back, only this time in the form of his proxy, the current Prime Minister.

I had the misfortune of being around back in the 2000s, along with the right hon. Member for Goole and Pocklington (David Davis), who is sitting behind me. We were part of the campaign that defeated Tony Blair at that point, and we look forward to defeating him again. The tone of the debate seems eerily familiar. Once again we have a Government earnestly assuring us that digital ID is a benign, benevolent scheme designed purely to make life easier for the general public. They talk about the Tesco clubcard and never having to find your utility bills ever again, as though it is nothing more than a boarding pass. It is a sort of, “Do not worry your silly little heads about this mass data collection or our new-found ability to monitor your every move. We are the UK Government; of course you can trust us.”

Well, we have heard it all before, and we know that this campaign is only going to be ramped up because the concerns remain the same: the threats to our privacy and civil liberties, the risk of mass surveillance, the dangers of Government overreach, and the too real vulnerabilities that come with storing vast quantities of personal data. We have only to look at the newspaper headlines this morning to see the true effects of that particular fear, with the breakdown in Amazon workplaces. Imagine if it were the personal data of everybody across the United Kingdom.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate, because it is an issue that the general public are engaging in. He will know that Scotland has its own identity card, known as the Scot card, which is used to store benefits data, debt data, the checks to make sure people can work with vulnerable people, court data and tax data. It is quite incredible. There are real fears that this—

[Karl Turner (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be short.

[Dr Arthur]

Does the hon. Gentleman share the concern of Big Brother Watch that there is a mandatory ID system in Scotland in all but name? Does he share the concerns of my residents that the data could be leaked?

[Pete Wishart]

I am not going to waste time responding to all that nonsense. It is a voluntary scheme. Does the hon. Member know the difference between voluntary and mandatory? All he needs to do is shake his head or nod. The detail is at hand. This new scheme has been objected to because it is mandatory—one of the few mandatory ID systems anywhere in the world. The Scot card is great. It is up to the individual user what gets put into it and what gets shared.

This new scheme could barely have got off to a worse start. Support for digital ID has collapsed since the public have been able to see the Government’s proposals. The petition calling for the proposals to be scrapped has become one of the fastest growing ever. It is now at almost 3 million signatories, and I am pretty certain that by the time I sit down it will be well over 3 million.

I heard the Minister’s car-crash interview on Radio Scotland. He told us simultaneously that the Government plans were both compulsory and voluntary, and went on to say that apparently digital ID would be “mandatory for some purposes”—a sort of partial compulsion, a digital half-pregnancy. Maybe this is a Schrödinger’s Britcard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

We are getting a little bit off-track, but I will answer that because the right hon. Gentleman needs an answer: no, I do not think that was a mistake. It was the correct thing to do.

Mandatory digital ID would fundamentally change the trust-based relationship between citizen and state, replacing it with one of constant verification and oversight. Let us not forget about the danger of mission creep. Once this type of infrastructure exists, it rarely stays confined to its original purpose. The Government say that the police will not be able to demand to see a person’s digital ID, but does anyone seriously believe that will not change over time?

This is about not just what this Government might do, but what every future Government might do. We are empowering not just this Labour Government, but every Government that will come after it. Imagine Prime Minister Farage, with all his authoritarian tendencies, with the data of the nation at his fingertips. It scares me half to death and it should scare the whole House half to death.

Then there is the cost. The Government have been very coy about the cost. They are reluctant to give us even a ballpark figure, and they are absolutely right—those prepared to work out an estimate on their behalf have said that, initially, this could cost anything between £1.2 billion and £2 billion. That is a gross underestimate. Laughably, our friends in Labour Together told us that it would be £1.4 million. We need only look at the costs of the physical ID to get a sense of what it will eventually cost. The physical ID would cost £5.4 billion. Some people reckon it would get above £15 billion, possibly to £19 billion or £20 billion.

Digital ID is much more technical and complicated to administer than the physical version. Do the sums work out? How much will this cost? All our constituents should be asking every Member of Parliament whether we should spend billions of pounds on a scheme that nobody wants and that there is no demand for when a cost of living crisis is raging in every single one of our constituencies. Are we seriously going to spend billions of pounds on an unpopular, crackbrained scheme that no one wants or needs?

Then there is what is happening elsewhere. We have heard foreign examples to suggest that this is just business as normal for this Government. They are keen to promote the Estonia scheme. I have had a good look at Estonia. Estonia is 10 times more digitally engaged than the United Kingdom. It is an entirely different nation. But even with all their knowledge, experience and digital systems, there have been catastrophic data leaks, which has led to real problems and issues for the citizenry. Look across Europe: Europe, like Scotland, is developing its own type of digital wallet. That is the right thing to do. People like having these things in a digital wallet. The key difference is that it is not mandatory—we come back to that feature again.

In Scotland, we are developing the ScotAccount, which has proven very popular. I encourage people to use it. There is nothing wrong with having things in a digital wallet. It becomes wrong only when it is made mandatory—when people are expected to carry one even though they do not want to.

[Dr Arthur]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again.

That is the issue, and the Government seem cloth-eared about it. In Scotland, we will have to pass what is called a legislative consent motion to allow this to go through, given our responsibilities for devolved services. We are not going to do that. The Minister will have to decide whether he accepts the democratic will of the Scottish Parliament or whether he will do a Tory and impose it on us anyway. I challenge him to do that in the run-up to the Scottish election, because he will turn this into a nightmare for the Government and a constitutional nightmare for the hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Dr Arthur).

We do not want these things. We think they are thoroughly bad. We saw them off in the 2000s, and we will see them off again. The public hate them, and I believe the petition now has more than 3 million signatures, so we are getting there with the general campaign. I pity the Minister for having to take this through; he would have been much better off had he kept his place in the Scotland Office.

We saw off ID cards in the 2000s. Twenty years on, whether it is plastic cards or digital apps, this is still a data-grabbing, liberty-eroding, multibillion-pound waste of time. We beat them in 2005; and the SNP, with our leadership of the campaign in this Parliament, will ensure that we see them off once again.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Anderson]

My hon. Friend raises a valid point. That has been a concern in South Shropshire, where I have huge areas that do not have high-speed connectivity. A lot of elderly people are not able to use an iPhone or computer, so they feel that they will be digitally excluded. Whether it is mandatory or voluntary, it is still—

[Dr Arthur]

Will the hon. Member join me in condemning the people who are spreading fear about digital exclusion? The Government have been very clear: if this goes ahead, there will be a hard-copy alternative for people who are not on the internet.

[Stuart Anderson]

The hon. Member has just highlighted the confusion around this. If the Government are considering hard copies, the costs could be into the billions of pounds, as the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) mentioned. There is no money, and there is not a problem in this area, so why create a problem, spending billions of pounds that the country does not have on something that no Government should be doing?

On the subject of digital exclusion, a large percentage of my population is not connected or does not use IT. My concern is whether the digitally-excluded pensioners in South Shropshire will be hounded by the police. Will the police be chasing them around, asking them to sign up? Will people find that they cannot get a job unless they have digital ID? There are huge concerns about this. [Interruption.] Members can shake their heads, but the scheme is being rolled out to stop illegal immigration. It is a dead cat story, and no Government should be looking to do this.

I have major concerns, and so do my constituents. I am worried about the security of the scheme. Look at China and Russia: we have continual cyber-attacks on the UK, as we have just seen with Jaguar Land Rover. With the advancement of AI, if we believe we can keep our data safe, why have spreadsheets been emailed to the Taliban? Mistakes happen, but imagine having the whole country’s data. It was done by a civil servant, and it is a disgrace it happened under whoever’s watch. We should not be joking about things like data going to the Taliban. This is a major issue. It is the start of an authoritarian Government, and I do not believe we should have any involvement with it. It should be cancelled straightaway.