Labour have suddenly reversed course on their plan to make digital ID cards compulsory for everyone living in the UK.
However, the party is maintaining their assertion that the right to work in the UK will be established by fully digital means by 2029. This could include documents like electronic versions of your passport, visa, or optional digital ID. This is similar to the current system, though in a more paperless format.
This news will come as a cause for celebration among the majority of people who thought that the idea was equal-parts draconian and ridiculous as soon as Starmer announced it. Unfortunately, there’s a problem.
I promised I wouldn’t make fun of them for u-turning on digital ID
On 9 January, I reported that the government was trying to fund the estimated-£1.8bn ID scheme by asking department heads to make cuts:
back in December, the PM’s chief secretary – Darren Jones – told ministers to find savings in their departments in order to pay for compulsory Digital ID. Jones apparently set a January deadline for this monolithic and thankless task.
Unfortunately, in the same article, I also wrote the following – which I have now come to regret:
So, to recap: the compulsory Digital ID scheme will cost a huge amount of money, and the government is desperately looking for savings (cuts) in existing departmental budgets to fund it. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the public hate the idea, and its impact on the digitally marginalised is unaccounted for.
Why exactly Starmer, Jones and the rest of the Labour Party think that ploughing ahead with this dire idea is a good call is anybody’s guess.
Actually, just this once: Labour can have a free U-turn. They love U-turns. We won’t even make fun of them for it – promise.
Unlike the current Labour government, I believe that a promise is a promise. However, I’d like to make it known at this point that this is going to be very very difficult. Here goes.
Heartfelt congratulations
Labour have correctly recognised that yet another U-turn would make their government look like a complete and utter farce. As such, transport secretary Heidi Alexander emphasised that the government is still backing compulsory digital right-to-work checks:
The digital ID could be one way in which you prove your eligibility to work through a digital right to work check.
At the moment we’ve got a paper-based system – there’s no proper records kept.
It makes it very difficult then to target enforcement action sensibly against businesses that are employing illegal workers.
While Labour remains committed to digital checks for working, it’s dropping the line that mandatory ID could be useful for, say, proving your identity to landlords or improving access to benefits.
Labour also deserve praise for their impressive unity in maintaining that this isn’t a U-turn. For example, chancellor Rachel Reeves told BBC Breakfast:
On the digital ID, for starters, I do think this story has been a bit overwritten.
We are saying that you will need mandatory digital ID to be able to work in the UK.
Now the difference is whether that has to be one piece of ID, a digital ID card, or whether it could be an e-visa or an e-passport, and we’re pretty relaxed about what form that takes …
I don’t think most people mind whether it is one piece of digital ID or a form of digital ID that can be verified.
Reeves also showed an admirable ability to deflect when her interviewer suggested that constant U-turns undermine public confidence:
The key thing is where you’re trying to go. Our government, this government, our focus is on growing the economy and improving living standards for working people.
The chancellor’s ability to quickly formulate and voice such a positive-sounding but utterly hollow soundbite was magnificent to behold.
‘Nefarious and very different reasons’
Ex-home secretary David Blunkett reasoned that the government hadn’t successfully taken the public with them on compulsory digital ID. The Labour peer – who was in favour of digital ID cards when Tony Blair first proposed them – stated that his party failed to properly explain the idea:
The original statement was not followed by a narrative or supportive statements or any kind of strategic plan which involved other ministers and those who are committed to this actually making the case.
As a consequence, those who are opposed to the scheme, for all kinds of nefarious and very different reasons, some of them inexplicable, were able to mobilise public opinion and to get the online opposition to it up and running.
This suggests that Blunkett very wisely chose not to read his own party’s explanation of the thought process behind digital ID. The document very clearly laid out why Labour thought the plan made sense, despite the fact that it was clearly dreadful from the get-go.
Blunkett’s move here was sensible, given that the explainer filled me with an urge to throw up the first time I read it.
I think we made it
Labour also deserves a pat on the back for allowing its MPs the freedom to undermine their own party. In fact, an anonymous Labour MP called the U-turn “an absolute car crash” for the BBC last night. Other parties might bully their representatives to show a united front, but Labour allowed its unnamed critic to say:
The boys at No 10 jumped into it with no thought, marched the PLP up the hill only to bottle it, take all the pain and no credit.
For their part, the Liberal Democrats called the ID scheme “doomed to failure” from the off. Instead, they stated that:
the billions of pounds earmarked for their mandatory digital ID scheme [should be spent] on the NHS and frontline policing instead.
This statement clearly proves that the Lib Dems haven’t been paying attention – yet another coup for the PLP.
You see, with startling prescience, Labour never actually created a plan to fund the mandatory digital ID rollout. Fortunately, this means that the latest U-turn will result in no real savings at all, so nobody has to faff about relocating said savings to better causes.
I’m going to sign off here by reiterating that Labour really have made the right choice in abandoning compulsory digital ID. The plan was set to cost an eye-watering amount of money, and would have infuriated the vast majority of the public, bringing yet-more ire down on the already-sinking party.
As such: a round of applause for the PLP please, folks.
(Phew, I think I just about made it through that without calling anybody a spineless, wannabe-authoritarian tosser).
Featured image via the Canary
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