Digital ID

Tom Gordon Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sojan Joseph (Ashford) (Lab)]

About 5,000 people from my constituency of Ashford have signed this petition. I recognise the benefits that the national digital identity scheme could bring; they have been debated in the media and elsewhere. However, if the Government are to go ahead with the scheme, Ministers must ensure that it is inclusive, secure and useful for everyone. Additionally, if the scheme is to be successful, Ministers will have to respond to the legitimate concerns raised by our constituents.

My constituents have expressed concern that a national digital ID scheme could become a tool for surveillance or a mechanism of state control. In recent years, we have seen an increase in distrust of the Government as an institution. It is important that any digital ID scheme does not further erode trust. Can the Minister reassure the House that if the Government go ahead with digital ID, strict safeguards will be in place? Would my hon. Friend also say what action the Government will take to ensure that digital ID cannot be used to infringe on individual freedoms or civil liberties?

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sojan Joseph]

I need to carry on; I am sorry.

Constituents have also raised concerns about the security of a national ID scheme. This year, we have seen the impact that cyber-security breaches have had on some well-known brands. My constituents have expressed worry that a similar breach of a national ID database could expose sensitive personal information on a massive scale. Can the Minister reassure me that there will be robust encryption and continuous security monitoring? What actions will be taken to ensure the highest data security standards? Another related concern is the ownership of data. Will the Minister confirm that any scheme will be designed with clear rules and with transparency, so that personal information can never be exploited for commercial or political purposes?

Concerns have been expressed to me that adopting digital ID will lead to digital exclusion. Not everyone has access to a smartphone or reliable internet, especially in some rural parts of my constituency. If digital ID becomes the only option for accessing Government services in the future, what proactive action will be taken to prevent vulnerable groups from becoming marginalised? The Government have an opportunity in this debate to respond to these and other legitimate concerns that our constituents have raised regarding digital ID. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that have been made. I ask him to reassure our constituents that, if digital ID is to go ahead, their concerns will be listened to and addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

Thank you for your excellent chairing, Sir Edward. I hope the Government have been given serious pause by the 2.9 million signatures on this petition, over 5,000 of which were from constituents in Brighton Pavilion. So many people are right to be so concerned, because such a scheme carries extreme risks to our privacy.

If this scheme is introduced, it seems impossible that we can be protected from any future Government who are determined to utterly disregard a lot more of our basic human rights. This iteration of digital ID could, through a unique identification number, link our most sensitive biometric information to our names, ages, nationalities, addresses, medical information and housing and criminal histories, enabling a detailed profile worthy of the Chinese Government to be put together, which utterly undermines not only our right to privacy, but many other things. We ought to be protected from the state having access to and control over all that information.

I hope that the Minister understands that private citizens are already starting to gain perspective on how unsafe our data is in the hands of private companies. The reaction to digital ID shows that we are now very concerned about the difference when a state has access to all that information and what a future state might do. We have already seen issues of data sharing between police forces and immigration enforcement. Migrants have been scared to come forward and report basic crimes around their right to safety because of that kind of overreach. The eVisa scheme has caused awful failures—people stranded at airports; people losing job opportunities because of the failures of the basic IT—but this is far more serious than that.

Right hon. and hon. Members owe it to our constituents to protect them from not just this Government, but what all future Governments might do. Combined with the recent clampdown on protest rights, the proposed removal of trial by jury and the capacity of the state to track and identify us through facial recognition, this adds up to a toolkit for authoritarians that we must not give away. It must be stopped. It is a house of dynamite.

[Tom Gordon]

Will the hon. Lady comment on the polling around digital ID? This summer, there was net support: over 30%. When the Government announced that they were picking it up, that collapsed to minus 14%. Will she give her thoughts on why that might be?

[Siân Berry]

People might have heard the Government claiming that other countries have had digital ID for many years and then heard about the security flaws in the Estonian system or the hackers in Estonia, India, Norway and Poland who have created enormous data breaches. I have dwelled a lot on state power, but let us not forget that creating such a database is an enormous risk. All the eggs are in one basket when it comes to criminally inclined people who would take our data and hurt us that way.

I was wrapping up when I was intervened on, and I will try not to use too much more time. The risk management calculations here are so clear. The consequences of things going wrong—whether it is state intrusion, criminals taking away the data, errors or data theft, so that people lose their identities to somebody else—become much higher when something like this, where everything is linked together, is created. I said that it was a house of dynamite and a toolkit for authoritarians. It is hugely expensive, and I hope the Minister will clarify the final cost. According to the OBR, £1.8 billion is only the beginning of the cost.