Digital ID

Allison Gardner Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

I think that when the British people—so many of whom now have online banking on their phones and store so much in their digital wallets—look at their friends, neighbours and colleagues across the channel and see that many across Europe have digital ID as a matter of course and that it makes their lives simpler and easier, their common sense will say, “We want a bit of that.”

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

As Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital identity, I welcome the Government’s proposals. However, many of my constituents have deep concerns and are seeking reassurance. In order to build trust in the digital ID system, it would help if people felt that they had choice and control over whether to use digital ID or not. As such, will the Secretary of State look again at the proposal for mandatory digital ID for adults and allow people a choice for non-digital alternatives, which incidentally would offer resilience against IT failure, and control over their data with a decentralised or federated data approach?

[Liz Kendall]

The Prime Minister has been very clear that it will be mandatory for right to work checks, but I can confirm to my hon. Friend that we do not want one big, centralised data set and that it will be federated. That is one of the lessons we learned from other countries. I am sure that there are many more things we will have to do to make sure that people’s data is secure, but this will give people more control because they will be able to see who accesses their data, and that is a good thing.