UK to introduce compulsory digital ID for adults. How will it work?

Want a job in Britain? Soon, you will need a government-issued digital ID. This is all part of a plan from the Keir Starmer government to tackle illegal immigration.

“It will make it tougher to work illegally in this country, making our borders more secure,” Starmer said while announcing the development.

The previous Tony Blair government had, two decades ago, announced a similar programme but was thwarted by the opposition. Interestingly, Blair himself is playing an important part in this proposal.

But what do we know about the ‘Brit card’? How will it work?

Let’s take a closer look:

The ‘Brit Card’

The card will prove a citizen’s right to live and work in the United Kingdom. Anyone looking to get a new job or enter a new place will be required to show the ID on their smartphone via an app. This will then be cross-referenced with a database of citizens compiled by the central government. There are reports that landlords, employers and government agencies will be able to check details of citizens.

The UK government claims this will “make it simpler to apply for services like driving licences, childcare and welfare." The government is yet to decide on details such as who is required to register, what information the ID should have, and if physical forms are needed. The government has said it would be similar to payment apps on the phone.

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The government will decide how it will implement the app for those who cannot use a smartphone, such as the elderly or the homeless. It would be similar to a digital driving licence, which the government has already announced.

The government is aiming to tackle the problem of illegal immigrants working in the country. It is looking to Estonia as a model, where citizens are given a unique number at birth that they use to utilise myriad services such as getting married, opening bank accounts, voting, filing their tax returns, and booking doctor’s appointments.

The government also pointed to India as an example, saying it had saved $10 billion (Rs 0.887 lakh crore) per year by tamping down on waste and fraud through digital ID. Blair, the former prime minister, is also involved in this scheme via The Tony Blair Institute (TBI).

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The foundation this week published a report saying that digital ID can “help close loopholes that trafficking gangs and unscrupulous employers currently exploit, reducing pull factors driving illegal migration to Britain and restoring control over borders.”

The TBI estimates that the digital ID system could be set up at a cost of $1.34 billion or (Rs 88.67 billion) and cost $134 million (Rs 8.87 billion) every year.

The Labour Together campaign group pegs the cost far lower – between $187.6 million or (Rs 12.41 billion) and $536 million (Rs 35.47 billion), with annual expenses of around $13.4 million or (Rs 894 million). The government says it wants to keep the cost down. The UK previously had mandatory ID cards during World War II. They were scrapped in 1952.

Blair has been a long-time proponent of digital ID. He introduced a similar proposal while he was in office. At the time, it was opposed by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Then, after Labour lost power in 2010, the initiative was scrapped.

The Starmer government has changed its position since it came to power last year. In July, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said, “It’s not in our manifesto. That’s not our approach.”

Why is this happening?

Because the Labour government is under growing pressure to tackle illegal immigration. Surveys show that taming illegal immigration is the most important issue for many of the British public.

Meanwhile, the far-right Reform UK seems to be gaining in the polls. The far-right party earlier this year prevailed in local elections, winning nearly a dozen council seats. This came as the Labour and Conservative Parties suffered historic reversals. Earlier this month, far-right leader Tommy Robinson held a massive rally attended by 150,000 people in London.

This comes as crossings across the Channel from France have reached an all-time high, with over 30,000 having made the journey this year and over 50,000 since Labour came to power last year. More than 1,000 people have arrived in small boats over just the past week.

Nearly two-fifths of those who claimed asylum in the UK from June 2024 to June 2025 came over on small boats. Starmer, who is said to have opposed the digital ID himself, is said to have been persuaded over the number of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel. He earlier this month said the conversation has “moved on” since the last time the UK tried to introduce digital ID.

“We all carry a lot more digital ID now than we did 20 years ago, and I think that psychologically, it plays a different part,” Starmer said.
The UK and France have signed a ‘one in one out’ deal to detain some migrants and send them back across the Channel. French leaders have been arguing that the United Kingdom needs to adopt stronger measures to deter immigration, including a digital ID system. Starmer and Macron met earlier this year to try to hash out how to stop the small boat crossings.

The government has been laying the groundwork for this digital ID for some time. The Labour Together think tank in June published a manifesto in favour of the ‘Brit card.’

“The Labour Government has the opportunity to build a new piece of civic infrastructure, something that would become a familiar feature of daily life for everyone in the country,” it said. “It would support better enforcement of migration rules, and protect vulnerable British citizens from being wrongly denied their rights.”

What critics say

However, a number of privacy groups have warned against the move.

The groups wrote in a letter to Starmer, “The balance of power towards the state with dangerous implications for our security, rights and freedoms.”

“Mandatory digital ID is highly unlikely to achieve the government’s objective of tackling unauthorised immigration. The proposed schemes fundamentally misunderstand the ‘pull factors’ that drive migration to the UK and would do very little to tackle criminal people-smuggling gangs or employers and landlords who operate ‘off the books’. Instead, it would push unauthorised migrants further into the shadows, into more precarious work and unsafe housing,” the groups wrote.

“Plans for a mandatory digital ID would make us all reliant on a digital pass to go about our daily lives, turning us into a checkpoint society that is wholly unBritish,” Big Brother Watch added.

The NGO’s interim director, Rebecca Vincent, said such a move could prove “uniquely harmful to privacy, equality and civil liberties”. The NGO has gathered over 100,000 petitions calling on Starmer to reject the idea.

What about the politics of it all?

The Conservatives and Reform UK have argued against the proposal.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said digital ID was a “gimmick that will do nothing to stop the boats.”

“There are arguments for and against digital ID, but mandating its use would be a very serious step that requires a proper national debate. Instead, this is a throwaway conference announcement designed to distract attention from Andy Burnham’s leadership manoeuvrings and the crisis in Downing Street over the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

“The Government has struggled to enforce its feeble one-in-one-out deal with France, which has turned into a 100-in-1-out national embarrassment. Can we really trust it to implement an expensive national programme that will impact all of our lives and put additional burdens on law-abiding people? I doubt it.”

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage wrote on X: “I am firmly opposed to @Keir_Starmer’s digital ID cards. It will make no difference to illegal immigration, but it will be used to control and penalise the rest of us. The state should never have this much power.”

So have the Liberal Democrats, who said the public should not be “forced to turn over their private data just to go about their daily lives.
This will be especially worrying to millions of older people, people living in poverty, and disabled people who are more likely to be digitally excluded.”

However, Lib Dem leader Ed Davey threw in a caveat, saying the party needs to examine the policy carefully. “Times have changed, and that is why I am saying ‘let’s look at it’,” Davey said. “There are models that may answer our objections as liberals.”

Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader set to launch a new political party, called the move an ‘affront to our civil liberties.’

Politics aside, the public seems to be warming to the idea

A survey in December showed that 53 per cent of people were in favour of a digital ID system, with 25 per cent of those being strongly in favour. Meanwhile, just 19 per cent said they opposed such a plan. The Blair Institute quoted its own survey saying that 62 per cent of respondents favoured introducing such a digital ID. Can the Starmer government succeed where the Blair government failed and win over the opposition? Keep watching this space.

With inputs from agencies