‘Nice branch of Barclays, isn’t it?’
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was attempting a bit of small talk inside a Brighton bank with a group of reporters, as Storm Benjamin howled outside.
All of us were there for the same reason: Starmer wanted to clear up any misunderstandings about his plans for digital ID.
Unfortunately for him, word started to spread on TikTok and Instagram soon after the scheme was announced last month – and not in the way he’d like.
Rumours circulated that the ID would track habits like booze consumption, meaning bar staff could turn you away if you’d bought more than your weekly allowance, or that you’d need it to get hospital treatment.
In early summer, net support for digital ID among the British public was 35%. By the end of September, it had fallen to -14%. There have also been public protests against the move.
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So, the PM was out and about trying to yank the narrative back under his control. We had questions, and he was going to have a go at answering them.
The PM’s main message was that using digital ID would be almost entirely voluntary. It could speed up tasks like applying for a mortgage, he argued, by allowing people to access government-approved ID at their fingertips – but they’d be free to do it without if they preferred.
He was keen to hammer home that there is no malevolent secret intent behind the scheme, as some have suggested. But I still left the bank with two big questions.
You might have noticed the careful wording earlier, of ‘almost entirely voluntary’. There is one situation in which digital ID will be mandatory, and that’s finding a job.
In fact, this has been sold as the main reason for the launch of the plans – clamping down on illegal working by making it simpler to check if people have the right to work.
But what happens to people searching for work who don’t have a phone to store their ID?
This came up at the bank, and the PM could only say the government was consulting on it.
He said: ‘Some people won’t have a mobile phone or they won’t want a mobile phone, therefore if they do want an ID we’ll make another one available to them.’
When that alternative option is revealed, Starmer may be asked why the rest of the population couldn’t just use that one too.
And the second, trickier question: Will Digital ID actually combat illegal working, or will dodgy employers just keep up their underhand tactics?
Asked that question by Laura Kuenssberg on her BBC show last month, the PM could only say we have to be ‘really clear’ that digital MP is mandatory to work in the UK.
He said: ‘This is on point of starting, not a retrospective exercise as it now is, it is an automatic collection of the information by the government so we know exactly who is working in our economy.’
We may only learn if a loophole exists once the scheme gets underway.
Until then, a few more chats in Barclays – or any other venue that might take the PM’s fancy – might come in useful.
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