Why is the UK politics scene so focused on digital ID? Blair first proposed it and I feel like I've heard about it continually since with no progress. Different justifications every time too
Because 20 years later, everyone has given their data away on TikTok anyway and we're still dealing with the same issues with different digital government ID numbers that aren't joined together at all.
I have (that I remember, probably more):
National Insurance Number
NHS Number
Unique Taxpayer Reference number
A student loan Customer Reference Number account number
Best part about gov id, there is no link between accounts. I have my personal gov ID account, I have my director of a business gov ID account and I also have a gov ID account for the business.
Why are these all separate, why am I 2 people according to gov ID. Why can't I access my director of a business gov ID from my personal gov ID???
The kicker is these are all linked, it knows they all belong to the one person, but if you log into the wrong one it tells you to use the other one.
That isn't too different from America, where you have a social security number, driver's license number, passport number (possibly two if you also have a passport card), and any other random identification the government demands.
In the us several of those are administered by different governments (state v federal) and at least one is literally forbidden from being used as an id number because the numbers are reused (but everyone does anyway).
Most people in the US only have the first two only ~46-51% of people in the US have passports and way fewer actually have a passport card on top of that. That's the majority of ID numbers most people have to keep track of.
The UK has a bunch of deeply divided issues: 40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners). The same is true for taxes and immigration and crime/justice and welfare etc.
So governments are desperate NOT to do anything on most issues. And they are desperate to do SOMETHING (as a distraction) on issues seen as more neutral and less likely to offend vast numbers of people.
>40% want lower house prices and rents (tenants and would be buyers) and 40% want higher house prices and rents (landlords and owners).
I think it is more that the electorate and their agents don't know how (or disagree on how) to keep housing affordable or more precisely don't know how to avoid passing laws and regulations that have the unintended effect of raising the cost of housing.
Rising house prices are routinely presented as a good news story by the Tory tabloids. To a generation of homeowners, their house is a store of vast amounts of unearned wealth and they bitterly oppose anything that might erode that wealth.
Because the UK does not have a national ID system like nearly every other country in Europe, the reason it goes nowhere is that it costs money and no one wants to spend the money on it.
I don't think so. I think it raises peoples' hackles because it is "not something we do here" - English-speaking countries seem to not go with mandatory ID in the same way as continental Europe. Maybe a Napoleonic/Common-Law thing?
This seems to be a pub bore talking point... the usual seemingly-clever street-level arguments that don't stand up to serious scrutiny.
If people think that if they get ID card, the government is coming to take their precious bodily fluids, then the country has bigger cultural, political problems than a mere public safety measure.
Some of the UK's biggest industries are money laundering and offshore tax evasion schemes for the very rich. They're literally worth hundreds of billions a year.
It's not a pub bore talking point, it's an oligarch and non-dom talking point. A lot of rich people would be inconvenienced if beneficial owner information records had reliable links to real people.
The pub bores are collateral damage - people who post unironically about privacy on social media.
Governments are always looking for better ways to track (and control) their subjects. The idea of a national ID[1] has been floated by various US politicians since before it would have been digital. Many Americans oppose it because they fear a government using it to round up dissenting citizens, and others oppose it because they fear it would be used to more effectively identify illegals (some oppose it on both grounds), so between them it's never gotten started.
The UK government does seem especially keen on the idea of a digital/video dystopia, though. Weird, like they're trying to prove Orwell right.
[1] Social Security numbers aren't unique and you aren't required to carry your SS card, so it doesn't work for that purpose.
The new justification (to deter illegal immigration) is expecially obviously bogus because, as the law stands, people must already prove their "right to work" to get a job and their "right to rent" to rent accommodation. Illegal immigrants manage, they would manage, too, with digital IDs because some employers and landlords are fine exploiting them. Or the plan is in fact to be asked "papers, please" where ever you go and whatever you do.
This is really easy to fake though and employers kind of have to take your word for it that the documentation you provide is real. I'm assuming a digital ID scheme will just bring all the data together and make it instantly verifiable for employers. I would normally be suspicious about this sort of thing but I do think a lack of a single entity bringing all the data together is limiting us technologically in the UK. What Estonia have done is awesome, it'd be cool for us to work toward something like that!
I have had many jobs and scenarios where I need to provide proof of residency and I have never once had a share code like you mention @mytailorisrich like this. The reality is that it doesn't happen like this. Usually about 6 months into your job someone forgets you haven't done the necessary checks and reaches out for you to send a couple of sketchy photos of your IDs so they can upload it to their HR system and forget about it.
As @vinay427 mentioned this is most digital now so you get a "share code" from the Home Office, which you provide to your prospective employer. In turn they go to the Home Office's website, input the code, and should get your picture, details, and entitlement to work.
If you're a foreigner on a visa(or an EU settled status resident), yes. If you are a British person(or pretending to be one) then you just need to show your employer your British passport(or one of several other acceptable documents), and obviously faking a picture of a passport is pretty trivial. And since employers generally don't have access to the system that can verify passports they take your word on the document being valid.
As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...
I think it is much, much, much more common to have dodgy employers/landlords who do not carry out the checks at all because they are fine exploiting illegal immigrants, and no type of ID card would solve that...
>>As someone who's just got their new British passport, faking the 3 pictures on it, and the whole passport itself, does not look trivial at all...
A lot of employers just want a photo/scan of a passport. I'm not saying making a whole fake passport is easy, it's obviously not - but modifying a picture of a passport is not exactly rocket science.
Most people are paid cash in hand if they're working illegally realistically. I'm not sure that would change. But in enforcement it might since you could theoretically make it a legal requirement to produce the ID, that's the norm in many other countries.
The people who have to do the check (businesses and landlords) don't have access to the system to check those numbers, or any training on what a real identify card or passport looks like.
A relative had this problem when renting out a spare room. How was she supposed to verify the Colombian passport shown to her?
You just cherry picked two examples which are not issues in other countries with ID cards.
ID cards can prove who is an illegal immigrant or not, and with the current atmosphere. I want to know and be confident that we can check people's status efficiently and correctly who's here.
Sure there might be some small process mishaps but for the safety of the nation, it is worth it.
UK politics is very simple: People have a lot of economic grievances and they are frustrated. People are made to believe that the source of their problems are immigrants/non-white people. So for a lot of people in the UK, anything against immigrants, even more drastic measures, are worth it and it makes the government appear to do something about their problems. Nothing ever really gets better of course, but they have no way to think about it any other way.
Fair to add that, despite every winning party promising reduced immigration on some level, and everyone that wanted to remain in the EU rightfully annoyed that Brexiters were simply voting because of migration, nobody in power has ever given the people what they want in this regard.
It doesn't really matter, people's grievances won't go away because those have nothing to do with immigrants anyway. They will just move on to the next scapegoat.
And no one will, because the UK wants cheap foreign labour. To no one's surprise, immigration rocketed after Brexit.
This allows the ruling party - the one whose names and faces keep changing, but whose policies don't - to keep using immigration for political leverage while also benefiting from it.
I don't think you mean "for the safety of the Nation". I think you mean "for my piece of mind my business is unlikely to get caught in a sting operation".
Anyone who is a legal immigrant can easily prove it and must prove it to live and work in the country. So what does that make anyone who cannot prove it?
The point is that digital IDs make no difference to illegal immigration, as can also be seen in countries that do have ID cards...
In particular, this is already done using a digital ID for foreign residents (at least on most visas) in the UK, which was phased in over the past few years.
I have (that I remember, probably more):
National Insurance Number
NHS Number
Unique Taxpayer Reference number
A student loan Customer Reference Number account number
A passport number
A government gateway ID number
A driving license number
An account with the land registry