All adults in the UK will need digital ID cards to work, under Sir Keir Starmer's plan to tackle illegal immigration. Photo / Getty Images
All adults in the UK will be required to have digital ID cards in order to get a job, under British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s plans to tackle illegal immigration.
Starmer is expected to announce his backing for a “Brit card” to verify people’s right to live and work in the UK as part of efforts to combat illegal migrants working in the black economy.
Anyone seeking to start a new job would be required to provide their digital ID, which would be automatically checked against a central database of those legally entitled to work in the UK.
The digital ID is expected to be limited to adults seeking work, but supporters including Sir Tony Blair’s Institute believe it could be expanded into a “super-digital ID card” that could be used to access all public services from claiming benefits to reporting potholes.
The move will require legislation placing a statutory duty on working adults to get a digital ID provided free of charge by the state. The aim is to have it in place by the end of the Parliament.
The plans will, however, be opposed by the Tories and Reform as well as civil liberties groups concerned it could be expanded to all public services.
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, said digital IDs would not “stop the boats”. “Most employers who are employing individuals illegally are doing so knowingly. They are doing so dishonestly,” he said.
“Merely asking those employers to check ID cards rather than the current checks that they are already obliged to do is not going to make a blind bit of difference.”
Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, told The Telegraph: “I am totally opposed.”
A party spokesman said: “It’s laughable that those already breaking immigration law will suddenly comply, or that digital IDs will have any impact on illegal work, which thrives on cash-in-hand payments. All it will do is impinge further on the freedoms of law-abiding Brits.”
Silkie Carlo, the director of Big Brother Watch, warned that it could extend to all public services, “creating a domestic mass surveillance infrastructure that will likely sprawl from citizenship to benefits, tax, health, possibly even internet data and more”.
The last Labour government tried to introduce ID cards, with the first issued in 2009, but the scheme was scrapped by the incoming Conservative-led coalition on the basis that it was an “erosion of civil liberties”.
However, the UK government is understood to believe digital IDs are necessary to ensure people have the right to work in the UK and that the national mood has moved on since Tony Blair’s plans were abandoned.
Polls have suggested up to 80% of the public back digital right-to-work credentials.
Britain is one of the few countries in Europe without a national ID card system, which critics including leading French politicians claim has allowed a black market in jobs to flourish, making the UK attractive to illegal migrants. Earlier this month, Starmer said digital IDs could “play an important part” in tackling black market jobs.
Detailed plans for the mandatory, universal and free digital ID were set out earlier this year in a report by the think tank Labour Together, formerly headed by Morgan McSweeney, now Starmer’s chief of staff.
Under the Labour Together plan, the digital ID could be stored as an app on a smartphone and then used to automatically check a person’s right to work against government records.
The system could also cross-reference the stored identity against company tax records to identify firms with workers who had not undergone checks.
Employers currently check identity through one of 15 documents, many of which can be easily forged. A typical employer will have the Home Office check that they apply such checks once every 150 years.
Designers of the Labour Together scheme insisted it would be secure as each person would have a private digital ID to interact with public services, which simply proved who they were without revealing any personal information.
Morgan Wild, the chief policy adviser at Labour Together, said it would be “extremely easy” for 85% of the population to be issued with digital IDs because they had passports.
But there would be a further 15% for whom it would be harder as they did not operate digitally or have any other form of ID.
“One of the big opportunities with this is to work out who our citizens are and how we can document undocumented people who have a right to be here but are on the edges of society because no one has done this exercise before,” said Wild.
People who did not want to carry a digital ID card or did not operate digitally could be given a physical card instead.
Yvette Cooper, now the Foreign Secretary, was said to be sceptical about the scheme.
However, Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, is supportive. Earlier this month, she said she was “very clear” the government had to deal with the factors making the UK “a destination of choice for those that are on the move around the world”.
She added: “I want to make sure that we can clamp down on that. I think that a system of digital ID can also help with illegal working enforcement of other laws as well. I do think that that has a role to play for dealing with our migration.
“My long-term personal political view has always been in favour of ID cards.”
Kemi Badenoch, the Leader of the Conservative Party, said: “This announcement is a desperate gimmick that will do nothing to stop the boats. There are arguments for and against digital ID, but mandating its use would be a very serious step that requires a proper national debate.
“Instead, this is a throwaway conference announcement designed to distract attention from Andy Burnham’s leadership manoeuvrings and the crisis in Downing Street over the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff.”
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