Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the facilitation of digital technology for formal age or other identification purposes.

DCMS is working to enable the development of a secure and trusted digital identity marketplace in the UK so that people can more easily and safely prove their identity and eligibility for goods and services, and businesses can save time and money by using digital technologies with confidence in their identity verification processes. The latest prototype (beta version) of the UK digital identity and attributes trust framework is published on GOV.UK.

As of 6 April 2022 ID checks required as part of pre-employment, right to work, right to rent and criminal record checking processes have been enabled to be carried out digitally by identity providers certified against the UK digital identity and attributes trust framework. We have no plans to make digital identities compulsory.