Britain should embrace voluntary ID cards, Sir Keir Starmer has said, just weeks after announcing that digital identification will become compulsory to work in the UK.
The prime minister said that while mandatory digital IDs “are very important” for employment, Britain could gain a “significant advantage” by adopting the cards for wider use.
His comments came on a plane to India for a two-day trade visit to Mumbai, where he will hold meetings on how the South Asian nation uses digital ID.
Opinion polls suggest support for the cards plummeted after the PM announced they would become mandatory to work in the UK by 2029, his flagship statement on the eve of the Labour conference last month.
But the prime minister batted away suggestions he had killed off public support for the scheme, saying the IDs were important to meet his party’s manifesto pledge to tackle illegal migration.
“We need to address the fact that too many people can come to this country and work illegally,” he said.
“And that’s why ID mandatory for working is really important. I think there is a case to be made about the benefits for voluntary ID into other areas, and obviously we need to make that case.
“I think it’s a really important discussion for us to have. So on the one hand, it’s mandatory for work, but I actually think it would be a good passport.
“I don’t know how many times the rest of you have had to look in the bottom drawer for three bills when you want to get your kids into school or apply for this or apply for that, [it] drives me to frustration. I do think that we could gain a significant advantage.”
He added: “We’re going to a country, India, where they’ve already done ID and made a massive success of it.”
On the day the prime minister officially announced ID cards, one of his closest political allies suggested they could be extended to become the “bedrock of the modern state”.
Darren Jones, the new chief secretary to the prime minister, said in the future they could be used for “really quite exciting public service reform”.
In response, David Frost, a Tory peer and former cabinet minister, said Mr Jones’s remarks were “why so many of us are worried by digital ID”, and a petition against digital ID hit more than 1 million signatures.
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy insisted on Friday that the plan to introduce digital ID did not mean everyone would have to carry it with them and that it would be “entirely their choice” whether people use it.
The ID card plan, which would require an act of parliament to implement, follows mounting pressure on ministers to take more drastic action to tackle migration as small boat crossings reached record highs this summer and as the asylum applications backlog remains above 75,000 – pressure exacerbated by the success of Reform UK in the polls.
At the same time, Sir Keir faces intense pressure over public services and rising welfare costs, after his own MPs blocked his plan earlier this year to slash £5bn from the social security budget.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has dismissed the ID plans as a “gimmick that will do nothing to stop the boats”.
The Liberal Democrats have said they would fight “tooth and nail” against the “nonsensical” plan, while Amnesty International said the move was a “dangerous overreaction by the government that puts the rights of all people in the UK at risk”.
