Digital ID

Siân Berry Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Liz Kendall]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will be learning lessons from those countries. People will be able to see who accesses their data, so this proposal will give them more power and control.

If I may, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will reply to the second question from the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois). There will not be a sanction or penalty for people who do not carry digital ID. There will remain penalties on employers who do not obey the law and do ID checks, but there will not be penalties on the individual.

[Siân Berry (Brighton Pavilion) (Green)]

I am not sure, however many examples the Secretary of State gives of other countries, that she will convince the people of Britain that mandatory ID cards fit with our particular values. Will she listen to the millions who signed the parliamentary petition, as well as to the fighting Yorkshireman Harry Willcock and the Churchill Government of 1952, who considered the abolition of ID cards an important symbol of a society that trusted its citizens?

[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.”