Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, how (a) GOV.UK Verify and (b) Government Gateway identity verification systems reflect the different legal systems operating in the UK and the associated variation in statutory provisions regarding name changes.

GOV.UK Verify and Government Gateway provide millions of citizens with access to essential government services. The number of users can be accessed publicly at any time through the GOV.UK Verify performance dashboard, and is updated weekly. Currently, 7.2 million users use their GOV.UK Verify identity accounts to access 22 government services across 9 departments. HMRC has 25.1 million unique individual users who have confirmed their identity and who have accessed their personal tax account, with a total of 96 million authentication credentials. For Government Gateway these include individual, business and agent users.

GOV.UK Verify keeps its accessibility under review and has consistently reduced barriers to make access to services simpler, focusing on the customer's end-to-end experience, and ensuring members of the public can access online government services simply and securely.

We are constantly looking to balance the need of inclusion and demographic coverage of government services with the need for strong digital identity assurance to reduce the risk of fraud. Both GOV.UK Verify and Government Gateway use ongoing user research, user testing and service monitoring to improve, simplify and reduce friction in users’ experience of these services. Offline channels and support are offered to users unable to use either GOV.UK Verify or Government Gateway identity verification services.

Government Gateway is currently used to access the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) and Self-Employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS). CJRS claimants (employers or their authorised agent) can log into the claims service and see the claims made and the date they were sent for payment, and SEISS claimants (employers or their authorised agent) can log into the claims service and see the claims made and the date they were sent for payment.

GOV.UK Verify can be adapted to reflect requirements relating to name changes to support departmental service requirements, provided there is suitable evidence of their change in name. Government Gateway Identity Verification allows online service access where sufficient confidence can be gained on a user’s identity and the ownership of the name in question.

The National Audit Office (NAO) report recognised that the Verify programme has delivered on three of its four original objectives. The Verify programme has successfully developed world-leading standards that are used by governments across the world. It has also developed a secure technical platform and a procurement framework for identity services.