Get your brit card

[SueEllen]

BBC News - Keir Starmer to announce plans for digital ID scheme - BBC News https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g54g6vgpdo

Though every other party hates it and I can see scope creep.

[willendure]

Not this nonsense again. It will just get hacked and then someone will take out a load of loans in your name, transfer ownership of your house, and get a fake passport while they are at it. Wish they would just give up.

[tazdevil]

Another duff policy from a duff PM who doesn't know his ass from his elbow, hopefully he'll be gone soon from his job of trashing the UK and its future.

[WTFH]

4 years ago the far right were all for it, it would solve illegal immigration. Check their tweets before they all get deleted - Daubney, Farage, Yaxley-Lennon (or whatever name he was using), Grimes, etc were all saying that they needed to be brought in.
What has changed since then to make these same grifters so hard against it?
They gone from "only those who have something to hide would be against it" and "lefties will be crying" to it suddenly being a terrible idea. It's almost like they will just spin round and say anything and hope that their rabble of followers (or at least the ones who can read and aren't on a register) will just lap it up.

[ladymuck]

I don't have an issue with an ID card in principle. Because the UK has always shied away from them, people are forced to use other documents as proof of identity and some can be very expensive to obtain.

I would also expect the ID card to tie in with the requirements of the online safety act with the handshake being no more than "is age > 18, yes or no". There is no need to share or retain any additional data.

However, the requirement that it is digital, and stored on a smartphone wallet means excluding all those people who can't or won't use a smartphone. So adoption will have to have workarounds which will make it easy to bypass.

For once, I think Kemi said the right thing: it's just a statement to distract from Andy Burnham's shenanigans.

[Smartie]

I can't quite believe the hysterical cries of 'tyranny' in the comments of media sites today.

The state needs a way to identify people who have the right to services and digital ID is a better way than the way we do it at the moment.
NI numbers for instance which are not linked to other biometric/photo identification and are not, apparently, even unique.

The current process of passport/driving license plus utility bills is highly inefficient and there are probably more people who don't have those, than don't have a smartphone. There will clearly need to be an alternative provided for people without phones and it's been made clear that people won't be expected to carry the ID at all times.

There's also plenty of evidence of fraudsters setting up utility/mobile accounts at someone else's address to aid in their fraudulent identification. The water companies have said this week that they don't even check when someone asks to move a water account at a property to them from the actual resident!

Yes, there are cyber security concerns, but there are plenty of government systems already in use - HMRC, passport office etc.

Regarding privacy concerns, a myriad of companies already have huge amounts more data on people than this will require.

If anything, the government proposals are too timid, with a government minister saying this morning that ID would only be required for 'right to work' checks, not NHS or benefits access.
But that's exactly where we need them. People might work in the black economy and avoid employment checks but fraud such as 'health tourism' and benefits fraud are a problem that this would help to resolve.

We should follow where Estonia led and get on with this immediately.

[tazdevil]

I don't disagree with Smartie but this government is too incompetent and has too many ulterior motives to be trusted to implement this sort of thing.

[WTFH]

I don't disagree with Smartie but this government is too incompetent and has too many ulterior motives to be trusted to implement this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, the precedent of incompetence has been around for many years, but denied by some to have existed. I would not trust The Tory/Reform/EDL/BUF to do anything apart from complain and blame others.

[ladymuck]

I'm concerned the contract to design and implement will end up with Fujitsu or Crapita. It could be done quite simply if HMG (or its civil service masters) had the balls to choose a consortium of SME's.

[tazdevil]

I'm concerned the contract to design and implement will end up with Fujitsu or Crapita. It could be done quite simply if HMG (or its civil service masters) had the balls to choose a consortium of SME's.

It'll definitely go to the current favourite outsource group and be subject to buggy implementation and cost overruns and future scandals, no doubt about it.