The digital ID debate has gone mad – let’s inject some common sense

Conspiracy theorists have filled the airwaves and hijacked social media. Let’s inject a bit of common sense.

No child should be mandated to have a digital ID. It’s wild I even have to write that. But a wilful misinterpretation of a government consultation document - that’s right, a paper designed to ask open questions in a democracy - has turned into headlines about “13-year-olds being forced to carry IDs.”

Organisations that should know better are peddling this misinformation. The consultation asked what age digital ID should be available from, not who should be forced to have one. That’s what a consultation is for.

That said, technology absolutely has a role in improving life for our kids and we shouldn’t let the short sightedness of conspiracy-loving organisations dampen Britain’s ambition. I love my daughter’s Red Book - the little plastic document you get at birth - but it hardly screams ‘modern Britain’ at me. Let it be a memento that stays at home.

After all, it’s crammed with sensitive information and barely secure. Forget to take it to an appointment and half the story disappears. We can do better than that.

Digital ID will not lead to mass surveillance. When I debated Owen Jones, he threw “Stasi” at me. Others have muttered “Gestapo.” History was never my strong point, but I’m pretty confident on when the smartphone came out and when Hitler and Stalin were in power. Authoritarian regimes didn’t need a smartphone app to suppress people.

What digital ID will actually do is make us safer. Right now, to prove who we are, we send copies of passports, driving licences and bank statements - often by email - sometimes with transactions crossed out, sometimes not.

The collective terms for that is “a hacker’s dream” and it’s no wonder that online fraud now makes up 50% of crime in this country. Digital ID fixes it: a single, secure, encrypted, verified way to prove identity without oversharing. Without oversharing.

It will also make Britain work better. It means ending illegal living - fake passports, cash jobs and rogue employers exploiting loopholes - while finally upgrading our creaking public services. Put simply: making life harder for people who shouldn’t be here and much easier for those who should. Imagine applying for pension credit in minutes, checking into A&E seamlessly, registering a child for school without paper forms. That’s not dystopian; it’s common sense.

We can learn from others. Estonia, where citizens celebrate their digital ID because it puts them in charge of their data; Ukraine, where it’s resilient even under Russian cyberattack; and France, which has used digital ID to shrink its shadow economy.

Britain should learn from them, not copy them. We have the brains, the technology and the ambition to build something world-leading: a system that protects privacy, restores fairness and makes life simpler for people who play by the rules.

The debate may have gone mad, but as a starting point to stopping Britain’s decline and transforming our future, digital ID is a very sane first step.

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Ryan Wain is the Executive Director of Politics at the Tony Blair Institute.

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