- The change in coverage comes after a nationwide petition opposing the plan gathered round 3 million signatures.
- The unique plan, introduced in September 2025, was for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s authorities to introduce digital ID playing cards.
- The concept sparked a large debate about privateness and authorities overreach and was met with opposition.
The UK authorities has scrapped plans to require digital identification paperwork for employees. This notable change in coverage comes within the wake of robust public opposition to the plan, political criticism and privateness considerations, and after a nationwide petition in opposition to the plan gathered almost 3 million signatures.
The unique plan, introduced in September 2025, was for Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s authorities to introduce a digital ID card (also referred to as the BritCard). It will likely be saved in your smartphone and show somebody’s authorized proper to work within the UK. The federal government claimed this could deter unlawful labor and permit public companies to run extra easily.
Nonetheless, this requirement has now been eliminated, and employees will now not be pressured to acquire a selected authorities digital ID to search out or hold a job. Employers will nonetheless must confirm the fitting to work digitally, however people can use commonplace paperwork similar to passports, visas, biometric permits, and different permitted IDs as a substitute of a single government-run digital ID.
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Privateness and civil liberties considerations
The unique digital ID plan aimed to switch previous paper-based work eligibility checks and modernize entry to authorities companies (similar to getting advantages and driving licenses) by placing folks’s IDs right into a digital pockets on the gov.uk web site.
Nonetheless, the thought sparked an enormous debate about privateness and authorities overreach, and confronted opposition from inside the Labor Social gathering, different political events, rights teams, and expertise specialists.
Civil liberties teams similar to Massive Brother Watch have warned that forcing folks to make use of authorities digital IDs may undermine particular person rights by making a single central database that dangers getting used for surveillance, hacked, or expanded in objective over time.
The transfer is extensively seen as a serious U-turn for the Labor authorities, and has been criticized by opposition events as displaying weak and inconsistent policy-making. Information stories level out that that is one in all a number of high-profile reversals since Starmer grew to become prime minister.
The UK nonetheless plans to make use of digital ‘proper to work’ checks, however mandating digital ID playing cards has been placed on maintain for now.
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