The Government has announced plans to introduce a mandatory ID system by 2029 for everyone living and working in the UK, positioned as a plank in its plan for better control of immigration. Matthew Davies, Partner and Head of Business Immigration, asks what is really behind the idea, how it might look and what could go wrong.
Reform UK’s success in pushing the alarm button on immigration is clear for all to see and hear. Not much is new in the current debate, but 2024 saw the highest annual inward migration to the UK in 75 years as the UK population reached its highest ever number – almost entirely driven by immigration. Instability in the European and world order, a flatlining UK economy, cuts in funding for public services and infrastructure projects, and jobs and housing in short supply do not add up to a generous national mood. It all plays to concern about who is, and who should be, living and working here, and who might be cheating the system or placing our society at risk. Cue the reemergence of proposals for a national ID card scheme. It is party conference season, after all.
ID cards in the UK – a brief history
ID cards are compulsory in many European countries and beyond and are considered quite normal. Accessing benefits and the jobs market is difficult without them; easy access to an unregulated illegal jobs market in the UK is increasingly cited as a pull factor for working-age migrants fleeing their shelter in first-world, democratic France. There is also a long history of unease about what some consider a very un-British concept; traditionally right-wing libertarians (which Nigel Farage is, at heart) dislike ID cards. Tony Blair was keen, 20 years ago and his Government began the process; it never happened. The Coalition and Conservative governments that followed objected on principle and scrapped the plan; public support for it had already waned.
The latest announcement and Government reasoning
The PM’s announcement on the eve of the Labour Conference came within a speech to the Global Progressive Action Conference, attended by leaders including the prime ministers of Canada and Australia – fellow centrists. The ID scheme was positioned squarely in the context of addressing issues related to immigration: "It is not compassionate …to rely on labour that exploits foreign workers and undercuts fair wages," he said. "The simple fact is that every nation needs to have control over its borders. We do need to know who is in our country." This scheme will “make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure".
Immigration may be the domestic political issue of the moment, but the Government cites other reasons, too. Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the PM, promised “countless benefits” for a scheme which could even be “the bedrock of the modern state and allow for really quite exciting public service reform in the future”. The idea of a one-stop portal to taxation records, driving licences, right to work checks, benefits and state pension is naturally attractive. It also put all our eggs in one basket.
How might the digital ID scheme work?
As so often with policy announcements, there was not much technical detail. “ID cards” is the phrase banded about by the media, but what the PM actually said was “Digital ID scheme." ID is likely to be held digitally on a person’s phone, not physically in their wallet - we can assume there will be no physical card at all. This is not entirely reassuring. The more enthusiastic public responders, including a career IT specialist who called the BBC’s Any Answers, favoured a forearm microchip implant. No-one is suggesting that. In fact, that once futuristic idea is way out of date.
Until the end of last year, migrants granted immigration status in the UK had been issued with credit-card type Biometric Residence Permits, with a chip, for almost two decades. The card strongly resembled a UK driving licence, which is unsurprising because it was made in the same Government facility in Swansea on the same production line. No more. Now migrants give their digital ID - facial recognition and fingerprint technology has moved on. Many who are deemed to be low risk simply upload their own through a smartphone app, right from the outset. This is linked to the system that proves the right to work. It is already in place, and has been, in some form, for years. Someone really should tell Government Minister Lisa Nandy who told the BBC last week that all you currently need for a valid right to work check is a National Insurance number. No Lisa, that was twenty years ago and more, and it wasn’t quite that simple even then.
The trouble with technology
It is fair to say that there are serious practical and security concerns about the accuracy, security and effectiveness of migrant digital ID. As “state actors” are fingered for some recent cyber-attacks on UK retail and industry, is the Government confident it can show its limited ID system to be robust enough to build on, and roll out to the whole adult population? Or is it that Government desperately needs to give a credible, reassuring reason for re-setting a digital system that has only recently ditched physical cards?
You might remember the old red and blue National Insurance Number (NINO) cards that the Government issued to everyone who turned 16 in the UK. They were plastic, chipless and increasingly easy to replicate, but could once be used in right to work checks. There were more such cards in circulation by the time they were scrapped than there were adults in the UK. Criminals and the ill-intentioned first catch up, then get ahead.
Technology has moved on, but it can still be easily misused. An example: asylum seekers in the UK are given ASPEN cards to make payments for essentials to prevent destitution. The government tops these up by small amounts. A recent Freedom of Information request showed more than 6,500 payments in gambling apps via ASPEN cards in the last year. The Home Office is looking into it; Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp says it is “shocking… illegal immigrants have attempted to use hard-working British taxpayers' money to gamble…. the British taxpayer has put them up in hotels, and now they slap us in the face by using the money they are given to fund gambling." If you work illegally, you will be paid in cash; you will not need your ASPEN card to buy essentials; your illegal employer will not be asking you for ID; and meanwhile your card will do nicely to pay on your gambling app. Not what the Home Office intended at all.
Then there is the question of cost and provision. Government infrastructure projects are notorious for overrunning timeframes and exceeding budget. Who will be awarded the lucrative contract to design and build the system, an integrate it with what is already there?
Public and political reaction
More than one political observer noted that the Government will have done some polling ahead of this announcement and that its positioning may be driven by that; it is expecting it to be received, on balance, positively by the electorate. Already a petition against it has passed two million signatures.
Reform UK is still opposed; a “cynical ploy to fool voters that something is being done about illegal immigration”, it claims. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey will, predictably fight “tooth and nail” against it. Similar objections have come from the SNP and Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland. Kemi Badenoch said it will "do nothing to stop the boats" and would instead "end up being used against law-abiding citizens while crooks walk free". Sir Keir Starmer never claimed it would stop the boats; but her point is clear. The civil liberties organisations are, well, organising.
Impact on employers
Up to a point; responsible employers may find right to work checks simplified further as digital ID provides one-stop proof, but it is not likely to differ much from the present arrangement (Lisa Nandy, take note). If you knowingly employ illegal workers, you are already a criminal; a compulsory digital ID scheme won’t stop you.
Is it lawful?
A fair question to ask at the end of a legal round-up. In fact, the law introducing a compulsory ID scheme is likely to be simple. There is no constitutional reason why an Act of Parliament cannot enact the scheme in the same way as any other piece of implementing legislation. Opposition parties will argue practical, political, cultural and moral arguments against it, as is their job. It is possible to see legal challenges springing from oblique angles; Marie O’Neill’s unexpected characterisation of “an attack on the Good Friday Agreement and on the rights of Irish citizens” is a clue to where one may come from. If the Government wants an ID scheme enough, and believes in its political capital, it will happen. Whether it will really help control illegal immigration and illegal working, or just open up new problems, is another question altogether.
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