17.3 Government digital ID

Status reviewed 22 September 2026. The national digital ID remains an active government proposal following consultation, not an identity document people are currently required to hold. The consultation says there would be no legal obligation to have or present it and alternative proofs would remain. Digital right-to-work checking is intended to become mandatory by the end of the Parliament, but the government says a passport or eVisa could be used instead of the national ID. No formal government response to the consultation had been published at this review date.

What is being built

The United Kingdom has no general requirement to carry an identity document. The Identity Cards Act 2006 scheme was repealed in 2010 and its National Identity Register destroyed.

The current programme is not the same scheme. It is being designed around a digital credential held in the GOV.UK Wallet and checked electronically, with the government promising that having one stays optional. The historical comparison is still useful, but it should not erase those legal and architectural differences.

The pieces already here

Several components already exist or are in development:

• GOV.UK One Login provides sign-in and, for some services, identity checking.
• GOV.UK Wallet is being built to hold government-issued credentials on a phone, with private testing of a digital driving licence reported in 2026.
• The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 separately created a statutory framework for registered digital verification services.

These systems can interact, but they are not interchangeable. A login account, a wallet, a government credential and a private verification provider do different jobs and may process different data.

The national proposal and what is mandatory

The Cabinet Office consultation published on 10 March 2026 proposes a national digital ID holding:

• name;
• date of birth;
• nationality or residency information;
• a photograph.

It would sit in GOV.UK Wallet and be verified programmatically when presented. The consultation closed on 5 May and was followed by a People's Panel ending in June. At this review date the formal government response had not been published, so design details and legislation remain unsettled.

The proposal makes two statements that must be read together.

• Optional credential. The government says people will not be legally required to obtain or present the national digital ID, existing routes to public services will remain, police will get no new power to demand it for ordinary stop and search, and suitable alternative proofs will continue.
• Mandatory digital process. It intends digital right-to-work checks to be required by the end of the Parliament. The March materials say an employer could complete that check using the national ID, a passport or an eVisa.

So the process may become digital and mandatory without this particular credential becoming compulsory.

That is more limited than the previous proposal was often reported to be, and the distinction matters. It does not settle the legitimate questions:

• does an optional credential become practically difficult to refuse?
• which services will accept alternatives on equal terms?
• how are programmatic checks logged?
• how does use expand?

These are governance risks to test against the eventual legislation and implementation, not facts already established.

The case made for it

Fair is fair: here is the case in its strongest form. A reliable digital identity could make many interactions genuinely easier:

• proving your age without revealing your name;
• using services without repeated form-filling;
• reducing certain kinds of fraud;
• ending the awkward business of posting passport copies to landlords and employers.

Supporters argue that people already hand identity data to dozens of private companies with far weaker safeguards than a government scheme would have, and that a well-designed state system using modern, privacy-preserving cryptography could reveal less, not more, than the status quo. Several other countries run digital identity schemes that are popular and broadly trusted.

These arguments are not empty, and flatly refusing to engage with them weakens the case for caution. The right response is not to deny digital identity could be done well. It is to ask hard questions about whether this scheme, with this governance, these safeguards and this trajectory, actually will be, and to insist that the burden of proof lies with those building a system that is hard to dismantle once in place.

Why it worries people

Function creep

The first and most consistent concern is function creep: a system built for one purpose quietly picking up others. A credential introduced to prove the right to work is easy to extend to:

• renting a home;
• opening an account;
• accessing healthcare;
• claiming benefits;
• proving age online;
• boarding transport.

Each step is individually defensible and administratively convenient. The end state, reached without any single decisive vote, is a society where one government credential is the key to ordinary participation, and not having it, or having it suspended, becomes a serious disability. History shows identity systems rarely shrink in scope; they grow.

A single point of failure

Concentrating identity functions can concentrate risk, even if the wallet does not hold a single central copy of every underlying record. The attractive targets include the widely accepted credential itself, plus issuance, recovery, revocation, verification logs, devices and relying-party integrations.

Incorrect source records, account lockout, lost phones and service outages can become serious if alternatives exist only on paper. So judge the final design on:

• data minimisation and selective disclosure;
• separation of identifiers;
• offline and non-smartphone routes;
• correction and appeal;
• breach containment;
• whether one relying party can correlate presentations made to another.

Exclusion and coercion

Digital identity raises exclusion and coercion questions even when formally optional. Not everyone has a compatible smartphone, reliable connectivity, stable documents, a fixed address, or the confidence to recover a credential.

People facing homelessness, disability, poverty, immigration complexity or domestic abuse may be harmed most by a digital-first process. The consultation promises non-digital routes and alternatives; implementation should be measured by whether those routes are genuinely available, timely and no more burdensome.

A credential shown on a phone also needs safeguards against an abusive partner, an overbearing employer, a fraudulent verifier, or an official asking for more than is authorised.

What you can do

Until final policy and legislation exist, check claims against the consultation and the later government response. Do not treat the GOV.UK Wallet, One Login, private digital verification services, the national digital ID and right-to-work checks as one database or one legal obligation.

Choosing an optional digital route? Ask:

• what attributes are disclosed?
• is a transaction identifier reusable?
• who receives the verification logs?
• how is a lost phone recovered?
• what equivalent alternative exists?

Where a digital check is legally required:

• disclose only what that process requires, and keep physical or independent recovery routes where available;
• do not use a government credential as a universal login just because a relying party offers it;
• review wallet permissions and device security;
• challenge anyone who insists on the national ID where official policy says another suitable proof is accepted.

Data-protection access and complaint routes are in 17.8.

Primary sources: the Cabinet Office March 2026 consultation, its full proposal, and the government digital-ID explainer.