Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to ensure that ongoing work under the digital identities framework to digitise (a) sex and (b) other personal information incorporates safeguards to guarantee the information used is accurate where it might be recorded differently on (i) passports, (ii) driving licences and (iiI) other documents.

Digital identities do not offer a new way to determine sex or gender. As with physical verification, individual organisations are responsible for determining what precise information it is appropriate to verify in a particular case and how they verify that to meet their requirements. The UK digital identity and attributes trust framework creates rules for how digital identity services operate. It does not set requirements for how government departments record sex and other personal information. Under data protection law, personal data which is processed must be accurate for the purposes for which it is processed.