#7 Inside Labour: Attitudes are shifting on Digital ID - here’s why
There has been a groundswell of interest and support for digital ID lately. As proud modernisers, Labour Together has long supported the concept of a digital ID.
As it stands, we are all asked to prove our identity multiple times every single day. This ranges from logging in to the NHS App to request a GP appointment, to being asked (if you’re lucky enough!) to prove your age when buying a drink in the pub.
But a standard digital ID isn’t just about convenience for the citizen
A digital identity system would help to drive growth, improve public services, as well as making people’s lives easier.
For instance, that could be proving that you have a driving licence when you want to book a hire car; or more complicated cases, such as proving your identity in order to rent or buy a property. Currently, these processes can be time-consuming and expensive.
For those who are identity-excluded, they are often not possible at all. For those who are homeless, having no address can make it impossible to get a bank account, which in turn makes it harder to get a job, manage money and live a normal life.
For public services, it could be transformative
Digital ID allows people to join up their data across different parts of the public sector so that public services can become more proactive and more personalised. For example, in Austria, as soon as a new baby is born, the social security department is automatically informed. It then assesses whether the parents are eligible for child benefit. If they are, it starts to make payments, taking the burden of form-filling away from busy new parents. Compare this to the UK, where it can take weeks to get an appointment to register a birth.
It could also help the Government deal better with some of the hardest political challenges of our time.
Providing an official, digital means of proving your age could help ensure young people are protected from harmful online content. And it could help reduce online fraud.
The role of Digital ID in tackling illegal immigration
Illegal migration is perhaps the highest-profile political issue of our times.
Using a digital credential would make it exponentially easier, cheaper and more secure to conduct right-to-work and right-to-rent checks. This would make it far harder for illegal migrants to disappear into the grey economy.
Modernising the state
Putting in place a digital identity system that can deliver all these benefits safely and privately is not a trivial matter. This would be a hugely valuable piece of digital infrastructure that will require sustained investment, coordination and backing from Ministers. But the technology already exists.
There are a host of British firms that are experts in this field. And there are already foundations to build on, in the form of the One Login for Government and the Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework.
Keir Starmer has set out missions to deliver real change. Those missions depend on modernisation of the state. We at Labour Together are proud modernisers and see digital ID as the key to a transformed, modernised state.
Jonathan Ashworth
Chief Executive, Labour Together
In case you missed it
A migration system that puts country first | Labour has committed to reducing migration. There are various ways this can be achieved. This paper sets out one way an Australian-style National Migration Plan could work. This is the best answer we have seen to the problem of how to reduce numbers while making sure Britain’s economy gets the contributions it needs.
Public Service Reform and Devolution | This report from October, by Sam Freedman, sets out how empowering mayors with greater oversight of the health, education, criminal justice and other public service systems, could help Labour deliver its public services mission. JP Spencer, Director of Devolution Policy at Labour Together, writes a foreword.
