Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is preparing to scrap the national digital ID program developed under Keir Starmer, with his team saying the government will redirect resources from the project toward cost-of-living measures.
Burnham took office today after succeeding Starmer as Labour leader. His spokesperson said one of the new government’s first actions would be to shift the time and resources assigned to the national ID scheme to areas where households would feel a more immediate benefit. The government has not yet specified the administrative steps needed to close the program or how much spending can be recovered.
The decision ends a policy that changed significantly after its initial unveiling. Starmer presented the proposed digital credential as a way to strengthen right-to-work enforcement and make illegal employment more difficult, with an intended rollout by 2029. Following political and civil-liberties criticism, ministers later moved away from requiring a single government-issued credential and said workers could continue using documents such as passports.
Cost had also become a central issue. The Office for Budget Responsibility produced an estimate of about £1.8 billion for the program, although officials disputed that figure. The estimate nonetheless provided the first public indication of the project’s scale and prompted questions about what services, infrastructure and enrollment work the funding would cover. The first public cost estimate for the UK digital ID plan arrived while many implementation details were still unsettled.
Scrapping the national credential does not by itself eliminate existing identity checks. Employers are still expected to conduct right-to-work verification, and proposed legislation would extend those duties to parts of the gig economy. The UK also has a separate digital identity trust framework used by private identity providers, which is supported by legislation and is not the same as Starmer’s national ID proposal.
The policy reversal follows sustained concern about centralizing personal information and making access to work or public services dependent on a new credential. Critics included civil-rights groups, opposition politicians and professional bodies. The Royal Statistical Society recently argued that a mandatory system could undermine public trust and damage the quality of official data, adding another dimension to the debate over trust in the digital ID program.
Burnham’s decision therefore closes the national scheme as a political project while leaving broader questions about digital identity policy unresolved. The government will still need to explain how it plans to modernize identity checks, support digital public services and police illegal working without the credential Starmer proposed.
Sources: The Guardian, UK Government
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
