NO to Digital ID!
David Vance SubstackRead More
In the King’s Speech yesterday, the government committed to a Digital Access to Services Bill that will introduce Digital ID to “modernise how citizens interact with public services.” Yeah, right. Framed as “voluntary and helpful” for tasks like pre-employment checks, moving house, or buying age-restricted goods, it builds on the GOV.UK One Login and Wallet. It is a further step towards Digital Imprisonment and we all see it.
Apologists for this Bill claim mythical economic gains of around £600 million annually and easier access for those lacking passports or driving licences. But this initiative revives the long-contested national identity schemes with profound risks.
For starters, it was not in Labour’s 2024 manifesto. So by omitting it Labour has avoided electoral scrutiny. Labour distanced itself from ID cards during the campaign, with figures rejecting Tony Blair’s calls for them. This is the scale of their treachery.
Introducing it via the King’s Speech bypasses any direct public mandate. This surely raises questions of democratic legitimacy. A policy with such massive dangers —linking personal data to daily life—demands explicit manifesto commitment and debate, not post-election rollout.
So why is Digital ID so dangerous?
Well to put it simply it creates a honeypot of personal data vulnerable to breaches, manipulation and control by the State.
The UK’s track record already includes major incidents like the Afghan data leak and Ministry of Defence breaches affecting hundreds of thousands. GOV.UK One Login has already faced criticism over security shortcomings, with reports of hundreds of thousands of vulnerabilities. A single compromise could expose biometric, residency, employment, and movement data for millions, enabling identity theft, fraud, or foreign hacking.
Even genuine “voluntary” systems risk function creep: today optional for services, tomorrow de facto mandatory for banking, travel, benefits, or employment as infrastructure embeds it. Surveillance potential looms large over all of this. We saw this during Covid and many of us said an unyielding NO.
Digital verification allows tracking of all our interactions—where, when, and with whom we engage—shifting from freedom to state-verified permission. It will make us a “Checkpoint Britain.”
We have been here before. ID cards were scrapped in 2010 after a public backlash over civil liberties – in particular the idea that the burden of proof is flipped, and citizens must constantly prove their legitimacy to the state.
Digital ID revives the same principle in a slicker package and 100 times more dangerous. In short, whilst it promises modernisation it will much more likely build a surveillance and control system that cannot be dismantled.
We must resist it at all costs and not comply in any way.
