The UK has debated national ID for years, but the discussion has become more pointed alongside growing privacy concerns. Two decades ago Tony Blair could sing the praises of ID cards and instead of public hysteria about data held by government, today Keir Starmer’s digital ID proposal – initially focused on proving a right to work – meets a distinctly more sceptical audience.
That scepticism has been turbocharged by a single figure: the projected £1.8bn cost laid out in the Autumn Budget. Yet the obsession with the initial cost may blind people to the greater scandal: the cost of inaction. Fraud already takes a mind-boggling toll on the UK economy – weighed in at over £200bn a year by recent estimates – while clunky, paper-based ID systems hobble everything from renting a home to getting services. That friction isn’t just annoying, it feeds a broader productivity problem by compelling organizations to waste time and money verifying the same individuals, time and again.
Viewed in that context, £1.8bn should be considered as an investment in security, not a political luxury. The greater risk is not that government over-spend, but that it under spends — or rushes — and winds up with a brittle system that became an embarrassment to the nation. A BritCard deployment at “cut-price” that ends in a breach would cost multiples of what the original outlay was and would cause irreparable damage to public trust. If it is the state’s desire that citizens adopt a new layer of identity, it must prove that the system is reliable as well as restrained.
The good news is that the core design can, in principle,support both goals. BritCard is akin to a digital version of a physical ID card, contained within a secure, government-issued wallet. Most importantly, the core identity data would stay on the user’s device, enabling people to prove certain attributes — like being over 18 — without revealing personal details such as a date of birth or passport number. This model of “sharing what is necessary,” is a practical approach to privacy concerns as it is designed to limit the amount of sensitive information that will be routinely disclosed.
However, none of this eliminates risk. Critics will reasonably worry about any central verification component becoming a lucrative “honeypot.” That is why transparency is non-negotiable: the government should publish how data is stored, accessed and shared, what protections exist, and how citizens opt in and control disclosure.
