Digital ID

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

The argument about individual privacy is an interesting one, because digital ID is a way of increasing privacy. At the moment when you show a form of ID, it includes all sorts of information that the person who sees it does not need to know and should not necessarily know. A digital ID gives the chance to show simply that you meet the requirements that are needed without disclosing any more information whatever. There are arguments that need to be well rehearsed and described, as part of the consultation, as to why this will not be a sudden increase in exposing your information to others. It is a way of protecting it, owing it and having agency over what you do with it.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome this initiative and I have listened with interest to the two opposition spokespersons. In 2010 and 2011, they abandoned the work that had been done, and we have fallen so far behind. We have seen people come into the country and work unregistered—not paying tax and not being part of society in the fullest sense. If a digital system had been operating, even the old-fashioned ID system, then we would have had a much bigger income coming into the country and a much better state of affairs than we have at the moment. We would have deterred people from coming here, which is one of the major factors behind it. I hope we will move quickly on that part of the exercise. I welcome the second part to extend it over a wider front too.

On cost, I hope the Government will be innovative and will not think simply in old public service terms: “This department is doing this, and that department is doing that”. I hope we can create an umbrella organisation that will be made up of Governments, local authorities and charities, involve the private sector and extend this to citizens. We should give them an incentive to join—as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, talking about the rights of young people to go out and drink—and cover issues such as that within the ID system. We should try to have a completely new structure compared with what we had in the past.