Mandatory Digital ID

Martin Wrigley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Martin Wrigley (Newton Abbot) (LD)]

The Government say that digital ID will eradicate illegal workers in the UK. It will not. Mandatory digital ID will not stop any more unscrupulous employers than does the check for the right to work in the UK, which is already in place. It is a vanity project that will cost the taxpayer billions of pounds and will not achieve the desired outcomes.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour needs to wake up? This scheme could put our personal data at risk, while costing taxpayers billions and doing little to restore public trust in the immigration service.

[Martin Wrigley]

I agree. Many of my local residents are still digitally excluded. Lack of mobile signal and in many places no fast internet access means that digital-only solutions leave too many people out in the cold.

[Rachel Gilmour (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the very idea of “Ihre Papiere, bitte” is not something that my constituents, or the British people more broadly, will stand for? That explains this cross-party opposition—which I, as a true Liberal, fully endorse.

[Martin Wrigley]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. The elderly, the disabled and those on low incomes are most likely to be adversely affected by this policy. The Government published a digital inclusion action plan in February 2025, but I hear from constituents that, seven months on, they have seen little or no improvement.

It appears that digital ID will be required not just for accessing employment but as a proof of right to rent, which risks placing additional burdens on people already marginalised in society. Mandatory digital ID also brings a deep unease about the growing relationship between the Government and large tech companies such as Palantir, Apple and Google. As a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, I have raised concerns about those relationships and have yet to receive satisfactory answers. Knowing that the Government are willing for those companies to hold and have access to such sensitive data is worrying. I will continue to push for answers and will oppose mandatory ID cards.

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[Ian Murray]

A full consultation will be launched by the end of this year. There are two options that the Government could have taken. We could have started from the position of a fully fledged programme, a fully fledged policy, and then taken that out to consultation; or we could take the approach that we are doing at the moment, which is to go out to consultation after we have had some initial consultation with people, so that the formal consultation is shaped by people’s views and the concerns that they raise.

I will give two examples, which are from the island of Ireland and from Northern Ireland and in terms of the common travel area and the Good Friday agreement. These are things that have to be resolved. We now know they are big issues, and that will go into the consultation to try to resolve them. We cannot have it both ways. We have chosen to take this particular approach in order to develop a consultation—

[Martin Wrigley]

Will the Minister give way?

[Ian Murray]

Let me make some progress and I will give way. I want to read Members this paragraph:

“We will develop and establish a trusted and secure service for users to prove who they are, and that they are eligible for a service. Users will be able to store their information and choose to share it when applying to public services. This will improve a user’s access to services by providing a safe and secure way to prove their identity, while reducing time and cost for the public sector. Additionally, we will develop an inclusive approach for all users to ensure that…services are available for”

all, particularly those who are digitally excluded. That is from the Scottish Government in 2021. The hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire’s own party as the Scottish Government is developing this; it is actually SNP policy.

Let me just bust some of the myths. This is not a Brit card. I know that members of the SNP like to call it a Brit card, because that is what gives them traction in the way in which they constitutionally do these things, but it is not a Brit card. And let me just deal with the issue about compulsion and mandation, because everyone stands up and calls this mandatory digital ID. It is not mandatory. That is the wrong thing to say to our constituents. It is not compulsory in this country to have a passport, but one is mandatory to travel. If someone wants to travel on a flight, even an internal flight, in this country, they require that ID to be able to travel. It is not compulsory to hold a passport, but it is mandatory to use one for travel. It is exactly the same in this particular instance. It is not compulsory to have one. People will not be asked to show it; they will not be asked to produce it. There is a whole host of use cases that would be voluntary—

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[Ian Murray]

Let me address that point directly. I have already been to Northern Ireland and spoken to all parties in the Northern Ireland Executive, and I have also been to the Republic to speak to the Irish Government about the processes that they have. In fact, they are about to introduce a similar scheme, because all EU countries have to have a scheme up and running by 2026. We fully understand the Good Friday agreement, the common travel area and nationality in Northern Ireland—that people can be British, Irish or both—and that will all have to be built into the system. As a Government, we have taken on board those legitimate concerns—not the myths. I have heard them directly from all parties in Northern Ireland, and we will ensure that those are resolved as part of the process. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join us in the consultation to make sure that those are resolved.

[Martin Wrigley]

It is not much of a consultation if the Government have already said, very vocally, that they are going to do it. It is really a question of how hard they want to beat people.

[Ian Murray]

Of course it is a consultation. It is about how we get this right, what it looks like, how it is built, how federated data is secured, how we deal with digital inclusion and how we deal with the issues in Northern Ireland. That is what the consultation is about. It is about the Government learning from that. [Interruption.] Liberal Democrat Members are heckling from a sedentary position, but their own leader, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), said on 21 September that “times have changed”, and that he had been impressed by a visit to Estonia, where a liberal Government had brought in digital ID. He said that if a system was

“giving individuals power to access public services”,

he could be in favour. Four days later, he said that

“the Liberal Democrats will fight against it tooth and nail”.

It is the same hypocrisy as the Scottish National party; it was their policy five days before they came out against it.