Failure to make a convincing case caused widespread public mistrust, finds parliamentary committee
In a damning report, the cross-party Home Affairs Committee said the original “BritCard” scheme, announced last September, was introduced without sufficient consultation, planning or evidence gathering.
“The announcement was rushed, poorly thought out and failed to make a convincing case for the introduction of digital ID,” the report states. “While digital ID was being discussed by Westminster think tanks and politicians, for the general public the proposal came out of the blue.”
It continues: “As a result, the announcement undermined what existing public support there was for digital ID.”
Indeed, prior to Keir Starmer’s announcement, pollsters had recorded a general shift in public opinion in favour of digital IDs. This went into sharp reverse almost immediately afterwards.
The government later reversed its stance on some aspects of the plan, saying the IDs would be optional rather than mandatory, but that only led to confusion about how they would be used to enforce immigration policy, the Committee notes.
“The government’s decision to abandon the mandatory element of the programme and limit its ambition is welcome, but it has also served to reveal the incoherence of its policy-making process and damage the confidence of key stakeholders and the public.”
The government also failed to articulate the benefits or rationale for the system convincingly, with ministers unable to answer basic questions about how it would work. This failure led to suspicions that the government was seeking new surveillance powers.
The lack of consultation and failure to set out the benefits meant the digital ID scheme was “doomed to fail”, with public confidence “destroyed… from the outset”, according the report.
Modernising public services – or tackling illegal immigration?
Digital ID was initially presented both as a way of streamlining public services – following the example of countries such as Estonia – and as a tool for tackling illegal immigration, an issue on which the government was particularly keen to appear tough.
But the messaging was confused, and the general public was not convinced that the benefits of the scheme (estimated to cost around £1.8 billion) namely quicker access to government services, outweighed the risks of large-scale data breaches, government mismanagement of personal data, loss of privacy and digital exclusion.
A petition against mandatory digital ID quickly amassed three million signatures.
Committee chair Dame Karen Bradley described the government’s attempts to present the case for digital ID as “nothing short of a fiasco”.
The Committee said the botched rollout had “needlessly threatened to undermine” the UK’s digital verification industry, which is worth around £2 billion to the economy.
Since the initial announcement, the government has dropped the mandatory element (although right-to-work checks will remain) and launched a full public consultation, including setting up a “People’s Panel” of citizens to consider any future expansion of the scheme.
It has reframed the purpose of digital ID as services first, enforcement second, emphasising that it will be free to access, and that access to public services will not be dependent on having one.
The government has also said it will expand on existing technology systems, rather than start afresh, and that engineering will be “led by government teams” rather than a commercial provider.
Dame Bradley welcomed the changes, but cautioned that the government could not afford any more errors.
“This will not be a quick-fix solution. As well as learning from early mistakes in the announcement of this strategy, it must be mindful of long-term failures in government IT delivery.
“Each element of its future digital ID strategy must have clearly defined aims, a comprehensive plan for delivery and strong safeguards. Any future mistakes might prove fatal for public confidence.”
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