London, United Kingdom — Shortly after King Charles III formally invites Andy Burnham to form a government on Monday, the incoming Labour Prime Minister will scrap the UK’s proposed digital ID scheme, ending one of the more controversial policies of outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
The decision, announced by Burnham’s office, does not end the government’s wider digital transformation programme. Instead, it abandons the proposal for a universal government-backed identity credential while retaining separate digital public services.
The digital ID scheme, first announced last September, would have required all UK residents to hold a digital identity — dubbed “BritCard” — initially framed as mandatory for right-to-work checks.
It faced sustained opposition from the start. A parliamentary petition against it gathered almost three million signatures, one of the largest in British history, prompting the government to drop the mandatory element in January in favour of a voluntary system.
That compromise failed to end the row. Critics warned that the scheme threatened to expand beyond immigration checks into areas such as healthcare, banking and travel, while supporters argued it would modernise public services and reduce fraud.
Over the weekend, Burnham’s office said the estimated $2.4 billion (1.8 billion pounds) planned expenditure for the scheme over the next three years — around $807 million (600 million pounds) annually — would instead be redirected towards priorities such as “helping with the cost of living”.
The decision carries a pointed irony. Burnham was the Home Office minister responsible for much of the early implementation of previous Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s original ID card scheme in 2006, before it too was scrapped in 2010.
Campaigners declare victory — but say the fight isn’t over. Elizabeth Anderson, chief executive of the Digital Poverty Alliance, welcomed the scheme’s collapse but for reasons distinct from civil liberties concerns. Research by her organisation found that one in five adults can only use online government services with someone else’s help.
Civil liberties campaigners have also claimed the decision as a win, though with a caveat. Alan Miller, co-founder of the campaign group Together, said in a statement that the announcement was welcome but that “our work is not done”, citing other online government systems that could evolve into a “de facto digital ID through creeping expansion”.
Not everyone has welcomed the reversal. The Tony Blair Institute, which has consistently backed digital ID, previously described the policy as “long overdue” and warned against it becoming “another failed government IT project” through poor delivery.
Source: www.aljazeera.com