With digital ID, we can take back control
(Tero Vesalainen / Alamy Stock Photo)
5 min read
The time has come for government to fully embrace digital ID – to reform public services, empower the citizen and fuel economic growth. It should be at the heart of the new government’s agenda, and a central tenet of Labour’s ‘decade of renewal’.
This evening in Westminster, I am speaking on a panel about digital ID with various technology experts. I do not pretend to be such an expert, but the political and policy salience of the issue is, in my view, clear. Properly adopting digital ID would be a forward-looking strategic decision for the government.
The old debate about ID cards is now tired. The world has changed fundamentally since the late 2000s debates around physical ID cards. Mass migration, a slowdown in economic growth and the fraying of our public services has shifted people’s concerns and the priorities of the state. Indeed, technological development has meant digital identification is already highly developed: you probably use it multiple times of day, to login to your phone, email or bank account. The private sector is well ahead of the state. Many of the historic arguments from the civil liberty lobby against a single foundational identification are simply no longer credible: we already share more about ourselves online than ever before.
In truth, though, unlike the private sector, the state has struggled to keep apace with the opportunities presented by technological change. A faulty IT system in the Home Office cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds earlier this year, massively slowing down immigration processing. Likewise, the NHS’s IT system is so rudimentary, there are stories of people dying partly due to software errors. To access every public service, you’ll have to use almost 200 different government account systems. Different doctors cannot easily access a patients joined up medical records.
A single digital ID would make immigration enforcement checks by employers and public service providers more efficient
All of this rightly fuels people’s concerns: about an immigration system being out of control, and that fewer criminals are being caught and punished. They notice they are paying more in tax than any time in recent memory, without much noticeable improvement in the quality of public services.
These are significant challenges for the government – but the opportunities from updating our digital services, for growing the economy and reforming public services, are enormous.
This government’s new data laws for instance will standardise ID verification, potentially boosting the economy by £10bn, freeing up 1.5 million hours of police time and 140,000 NHS staff hours every year. Likewise, the spread of One Login across departments will simplify government navigation and data sharing, facilitating a personalised system for users. The Health Secretary also has plans for ‘patient passports’, portable medical records which would give every NHS patient all their information digitally in one place.
These reforms will be critical to delivering on our mandate for higher growth and better public services. They will also help us lower the tax burden for this country in the long-term.
But success in these reforms does not guarantee Labour will be rewarded at the next election: in recent days, we have seen a centre-left government’s faith in ‘deliverism’ punished by dissatisfied and alienated voters. With this warning, our priority should be empowering our citizens further, making the state more responsive to their needs, values and priorities.
To truly put power back in the hands of citizens, the government should adopt something more ambitious: a single, fully functional foundational digital identity you could store easily on your smartphone.
Such a foundational identity would bring the UK in line with more efficient, participatory states like Singapore, Estonia and Finland, where citizens have secure access to joined up, proactive public services. Indeed, rather than putting obstacles in the way of citizens and business, a digital ID would allow us to better harness new developments, more importantly the AI revolution.
Consider the student whose new course could be tailored by artificial intelligence on the basis of their educational journey to date. The patient, with complex medical conditions, navigating an often siloed NHS. The person attempting to grapple with the overly complex tax or benefit system.
Consider how the state could be more effective as a result of new insights. In the education sector, journeys from pre-school to graduation could be monitored for best results (both academic, but more generally too). Our NHS would receive new insights to inform preventative public health initiatives. The police would have a better sense of patterns in crime and anti-social behaviour.
And it would hand back control to our communities about who has the right to live and work in this country. A single digital ID would make immigration enforcement checks by employers and public service providers more efficient and consistent; by making it harder to live illegally in the UK, the UK would become a far less attractive destination for illegal migrants.
As the Prime Minister has said in the past, taking back control is a Labour argument. Ahead of the next election, pushing forward with a single, foundational digital ID would empower working people to feel more in control of their own lives and communities, rather than at the mercy of foreign forces and big tech.
Jake Richards is the Labour MP for Rother Valley
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