Ministers have rolled back plans for a central element of the proposed digital ID plans, leaving open the possibility that people will be able to use other forms of identification to prove their right to work.
This will mean that the IDs, announced to some controversy in September, will no longer be mandatory for working-age people, given that the only planned obligatory element was to prove the right to work in the UK.
While officials said this was not a U-turn, just a tweak before a detailed consultation on how the system will function, it will be viewed as the latest in a series of policy changes, including on business rates and inheritance tax for farmers.
When Keir Starmer announced the proposal for digital IDs by 2029 they were billed as voluntary, with the exception that they would be mandatory for people to show they were legally allowed to work.
This was portrayed by the prime minister as a main benefit of the plan. “Digital ID is an enormous opportunity for the UK,” he said. “It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure.”
People will still be required to verify their ID digitally, by a process still to be finished, but this could involve existing documents such as a passport. The hope is that this would crack down on illegal working while avoiding the controversy of an in effect compulsory ID system.
It is understood that one of the motivations for the change was to allow people who wanted to use digital ID to do so, while avoiding the PR hurdle of a mandatory element. As one official put it: “We will no longer have the conspiracy nonsense about state control.”
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to mandatory digital right to work checks. We have always been clear that details on the digital ID scheme will be set out following a full public consultation which will launch shortly.
“Digital ID will make everyday life easier for people, ensuring public services are more personal, joined up, and effective, while also remaining inclusive.”
The Conservatives called the move “yet another humiliating U-turn from the government”.
Mike Wood, a shadow Cabinet Office minister, said: “What was sold as a tough measure to tackle illegal working is now set to become yet another costly, ill-thought-out experiment abandoned at the first sign of pressure from Labour’s backbenches.”
Lisa Smart, the Liberal Democrats’ Cabinet Office spokesperson, said: “No 10 must be bulk ordering motion sickness tablets at this rate to cope with all their U-turns.
“It was clear right from the start this was a proposal doomed to failure, that would have cost obscene amounts of taxpayers money to deliver absolutely nothing.
“The government now needs to confirm that the billions of pounds earmarked for their mandatory digital ID scheme will be spent on the NHS and frontline policing instead.”
A government source said the revised plans would not change the main principle of the original proposal, in which checks for eligibility to work were to be made tougher, in line with systems in other countries.
Currently, they said, many were based on employers seeing paper copies of documents, whereas under the new system it was likely to involve a digital check of a passport or e-visa.
