Well, here we go again.
It’s taken twenty years, but ID cards are back, this time in shiny digital form, turbocharged by modern technology. This week, I led the first House of Commons debate on Digital ID, with the SNP leading opposition to the so-called Starmer Britcard, as this Labour Government seeks once again to impose it on a sceptical public.
We’ve been here before. Back in the mid-2000s, Tony Blair tried to introduce ID cards but was forced to abandon them after widespread opposition from civil liberties groups, Parliament and the public. Two decades on, the same idea has risen from the political grave — only now, Blair’s dream might be realised not by himself, but through his political heir in Downing Street.
I was there the first time around, as the SNP’s Home Affairs spokesperson, and this debate feels eerily familiar. Once again, a government insists this is a benign, helpful reform — a “nothing to worry about” policy designed to make life easier. And once again, we’re told to trust the UK Government with the mass collection of personal data and the power to monitor our daily lives.
The public aren’t buying it. Since the plans were unveiled, support for digital ID has collapsed. A petition to scrap the scheme has become one of the fastest-growing, nearing three million signatures. It wasn’t in Labour’s manifesto, and the Minister responsible, Ian Murray, has already tied himself in knots by claiming the Britcard will somehow be both voluntary and compulsory — “mandatory for some purposes”, as he put it. We all know what that means: mandatory in all but name.
To make matters worse, branding it the Britcard has alienated most of Scotland and Northern Ireland. It was meant to be a unifying symbol, but instead it’s become a perfect emblem of tone-deaf policymaking.
The Government claims the Britcard will be free and available to all citizens and legal residents. What they haven’t said is how far its reach will extend or who will be required to have one. Reports suggest it could apply to teenagers as young as 13, with veterans already lined up as test cases.
We’re told it’s needed to tackle illegal working and migration, but the evidence doesn’t stack up. Around the world, mandatory ID schemes haven’t stopped illegal working — they’ve just increased surveillance and bureaucracy.
Civil liberties groups are united in opposition. Big Brother Watch calls digital ID a “civil liberties nightmare”, and Amnesty International warns it risks becoming both a hacker’s honeypot and a tool for state surveillance. They’re right.
In the UK, we’ve never had to prove who we are when we’re not suspected of doing anything wrong. Forcing people to hand over personal data just to access everyday services would create a “papers, please” culture utterly alien to our way of life.
Mandatory digital ID would fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state, replacing trust with constant verification and oversight. And once that infrastructure exists, it rarely stays limited to its original purpose. The Government insists the police won’t be able to demand to see someone’s Britcard — but who truly believes that won’t change in future?
That’s the real danger. It’s not only about what this government might do, but what future ones could. Once the system exists, any administration — even a Prime Minister Farage — would inherit its powers.
Then there’s inclusion. Millions in the UK don’t own smartphones or aren’t confident using apps. The Government’s vague promise to “deal with it in consultations” simply isn’t good enough.
And of course, there’s the cost. Ministers have been reluctant to discuss it, but estimates already range from £1.2 billion to £2 billion — figures that can only be described as optimistic. The physical ID card scheme of the 2000s was projected to cost £5.4 billion and could have risen to £19 billion. This digital version is vastly more complex, yet we’re told it will somehow be cheaper.
Are we really going to spend billions on a scheme nobody asked for, in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis? Whether plastic cards or digital apps, this remains a data-grabbing, liberty-eroding, multi-billion-pound waste of time.
We saw off ID cards in 2005, and the SNP will do everything in our power to ensure the Britcard meets the same fate. Let’s confine this ill-conceived project — and Tony Blair’s long-shadowed dream of a surveillance state — to the digital dustbin of history, where it belongs.
We saw off ID cards in 2005 – The SNP will do everything in our power to ensure the Britcard meets the same fate
