Back in the 2000s, the Liberal Democrats led the fight against the Labour Government’s plans for compulsory ID cards and a vast, centralised database of personal information. The scheme was expensive, invasive, and fundamentally illiberal, and we were absolutely right to oppose it.
The values that guided us then still underpin our work today. We remain firmly committed to protecting privacy and civil liberties, and to limiting the power of the state. But the tools now available to both invade and protect privacy have evolved dramatically. In this new information age, it is only right that we take a fresh look at how best to defend these principles.
Smartphones are ubiquitous. Many of us now access banking, healthcare, and public services online. Meanwhile, private companies have created their own forms of digital identity, and government departments have trialled new systems, often without a clear, open debate about their scope or safeguards.
The world has changed profoundly, but our policy has remained largely unchanged for twenty years.
In an increasingly digital world, it is worth asking whether we should revisit our approach to ensure it continues to protect the freedoms we have always sought to uphold.
So what should we be thinking about?
It seems to me that any digital identity system needs to respect individual autonomy; needs to be voluntary, not compulsory; needs to protect people’s data, rather than collect more than is needed; and needs to be secure, transparent and designed with clear legal limits.
We also have to be honest about where things could go wrong. A poorly designed scheme could deepen digital exclusion or end up extending state power in horrifying and authoritarian ways. There’s also the prospect of poor implementation and wasted taxpayer money – the government’s track record on major IT projects (whether Labour or Conservative-led) doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
At the same time, we shouldn’t dismiss the potential benefits. If done properly, digital identity could make it easier for people to prove who they are securely and quickly. It could reduce fraud, help identify undocumented migrants, and enable citizens to access what they’re entitled to without handing over unnecessary data or forcing them to duplicate time-intensive paperwork.
We should look to countries like Estonia, where they have successfully implemented an e‑ID system, built on a secure, interoperable platform that takes advantage of cutting edge digital tools to protect citizens. It has streamlined everything from voting and tax filing to healthcare, whilst maintaining public trust by giving citizens transparency and control over their own data.
A liberal approach would, above all, place power in the hands of individuals, not the state or large tech corporations. It would carefully examine solutions such as decentralised architecture to reduce the risk of data breaches, citizen-owned data, legal safeguards to prevent state-overreach, and interoperability to prevent vendor lock-in. It would be designed around consent, with clear limits on what information is collected, who owns that information, and who can access it.
We also need to think carefully about inclusion. Not everyone has a smartphone. Not everyone is confident online. Any system must work for people who are digitally illiterate and we should be prepared to offer proper alternatives and support, rather than leaving people behind.
All of this should be up for discussion.
That’s why I am hosting a Q&A session on Digital IDs at Autumn Conference. We want to hear from members across the party, whether you’re sceptical or curious – bring your questions, concerns, and ideas.
The Liberal Democrats have always led the way in defending civil liberties. We also believe in using technology to empower people and expand opportunity. The challenge now is to marry those two principles together to hold the Government to account.
We don’t need to rush to an answer. But we do need to start asking the right questions.
Editor’s Note: If you want to attend the policy discussion at Conference, you will need to be up early. It’s at 8 am on Sunday 21st September in the Sandbanks Room at the Marriott. If you are not at Conference, do email your views to Lisa at [email protected].
* Lisa Smart is the Liberal Democrat MP for Hazel Grove and the party's Home Affairs spokesperson
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54 Comments
I am a Liberal, and we are against this sort of thing.
And now I’ve got the obligatory Harry Wilcock quote out of the way: there are some things we should absolutely compromise our policies on, when times change and new developments occur. This is not one of them. This is a liberal principle for a reason. I genuinely cannot believe that this article was written by a parliamentarian who sits for our party.
“It could reduce fraud, help identify undocumented migrants, and enable citizens to access what they’re entitled to without handing over unnecessary data or forcing them to duplicate time-intensive paperwork.”
There is always a human doing the identifying. So what we are talking about is outing some of the least safe, most at-risk people in society – and in the current climate, outing them to what is effectively a mob at the moment. But apparently this could be liberal.
Good grief.
Civil liberties should not be given away lightly; they are our most basic protection from tyranny.
One look at the current opinion polls should remind people of that.
Lib Dems and Liberals before us rightly fought to protect these basic freedoms against governments far more benign than the one we now face, with almost daily attacks on the right to express dissent (unless advocating for discrimination against vulnerable minorities, it seems). Those attacks have been met with regrettable silence when Liberals should have been challenging and opposing them.
Totally the wrong thing to do, at the wrong time. To put it mildly.
“digital identity could […] help identify undocumented migrants[…]”
At a time when bigotry and racism against migrants is being whipped up by seemingly everyone across the political spectrum, bigotry which we as liberals desperately need to be standing against, *this* is one of the top reasons given by our Home Affairs spokesperson for why we suddenly need to backtrack on a deeply held liberal principle that’s been our policy since at least 1950 (the year of Harry Willcock’s famous refusal to show his ID card because “I am a Liberal and I’m against this sort of thing”)?! Maybe there could be some reasons to think about doing so, but if snooping on migrants is the best justification this piece can come up with then I seriously doubt it – between this, voter ID requirements, and the ongoing shambles that is the Online Safety Act, we as liberals should be the ones challenging this seeming authoritarian turn toward a society that demands constant ID checks of its people. The post immediately before this one on LDV is about Christine Jardine standing up for migrants and saying that “Human beings are human beings. I intend to ensure my country treats everyone as such” – let’s listen to her, rather than floating U-turns in an attempt to chase every other party down the dangerous path of trying to be seen cracking down on migrants.
“A liberal approach would, above all, place power in the hands of individuals, not the state or large tech corporations.”
Quite right. And that is why a liberal approach does not ask people for their papers please in any circumstance beyond the strictly necessary.
Why don’t you instead focus your attention on restoring civil liberties that have been systematically trashed by Labour and Tory governments? We could, for example, start arguing for the removal of legislation that forces large swaths of the private sector to act as a nasty little adjunct of the state’s authority when it comes to checking people’s migration status.
Or, and bear with me because I know this is super-controversial: perhaps we could argue for the restoration of the right to peaceful protest, with safety from police intervention for making the wrong kind of noises?
While I agree with the principles, and said no to the NIR when offered by New Labour…
In the world today there ARE digital ID systems, and they are run by the FANGs and untrusted third-parties.
Want to watch iPlayer? Want to deal with your bank? Want to access your tax account? How about that online shop? Loyalty card? Do you want to login using your Google account? Your Facebook account? Are you OK with your logins being stored in Trump’s America? What is the minimum requirement for a single sign-on service to deal with the state?
It looks like there is no free coffee (mentioned in the Directory) at this Q&A. I shall brink a flask. I may have questions.
Its no bad thing to revisit any policy area, and I don’t for a moment doubt the good faith behind this
But….
We are a liberal party. If we are not the bastion against this kind of thing from a principle perspective, we leave the door open for people who oppose ID cards for themselves but want them to be mandatory for migrants and others they believe to deserve enhanced state scrutiny. It sounds like an odd thing, but ID cards were what confirmed me as a liberal, because I realised I agreed strongly with David Davis on this but precious little else. The best way to avoid incompetent delivery on an invasive, nosey innovation by the state is to decide the innovation should not go ahead. No to statutory ID cards, digital or otherwise.
I cannot imagine any circumstances in which a Liberal organisation could be in favour of ID cards. Is anybody watching what is happening in America at the moment? We want to import that nonsense here? I think not.
Beyond the obligatory Harry Wilcock quote, My other current chief concern with any form of digital ID, inevitable as it may be, is down to the current Government’s policy on trans people. With the growing recent slide of the Government towards a situation where the Government feels I need to broadcast to the world what my chromosomes are and this determining my rights, I do not trust them an inch to not insist on a “Assigned Sex at Birth” field being on the ID (digital and physical ID). This would, quite obviously, be an invasion of privacy. But the current Government has already shown that privacy and human rights are optional for some people.
The Blair-era assault on civil liberties – ID cards, 90 day detention, “the innocent should have nothing to fear from these proposals” – we’re what made me realise I was a Liberal Democrat in the first place.
The session Lisa refers to, but bizarrely doesn’t actually give the details of, is at 8am in the Sandbanks Suite of the Highcliff Marriott on the Sunday of autumn conference. Unfortunately I won’t be able to be there, but I hope as many Lib Dems as possible are able to attend and show how close our Home Affairs spokesperson is getting to catastrophe by taking the position that the civil liberties we fought for yesterday are worth sacrificing today.
It’s a no from me too. Even if I agreed with the concept in principle (I don’t), what would happen in practice would be a vast IT project, inevitably run by US tech companies, delivering a system over budget, that fails to deliver the promised benefits but all the downsides.
And even if it started off as “voluntary”, it would inevitably become mandatory either legally or practically.
I think Lisa is right.
For far too long we have tried being liberal. The way forward is to compromise with ourselves and adopt positions that don’t distinguish us from the other political parties.
Having principles is massively overrated anyway. Standing for something is just too risky. If we can triangulate our way to a safe position where we are not really against something or for anything else we are sure to suddenly start getting press attention. Ed Davey is at his most effective when he can just stand in the shadow of Keir Starmer and smile.
This could “help identify undocumented migrants.” Seriously? That’s a reason why we should throw away decades of principled opposition to the state invading people’s privacy?
So much of politics today involves doublethink and powerless individuals being built up as a threat. Immigrants are dole-scroungers who are bleeding the country dry and at the same time coming over here and “taking our jobs”. Trans women are simultaneously a tiny minority, not worth legislating for and at the same time a threat to cis women, invading their spaces.
I would have hoped that someone who represents this party on home affairs would be above demonising minorities in order to justify further reduction of civil liberties. More fool me.
Me: OK, let’s revisit ID cards. Would they still give the state significant powers which risk undermining individual liberties, especially for vulnerable groups?
Lisa S: “A poorly designed scheme could deepen digital exclusion or end up extending state power in horrifying and authoritarian ways.”
Me: well, that answers that one.
“A liberal approach would, above all, place power in the hands of individuals, not the state or large tech corporations.”
Like Elon Musk? In the UK it would be mainly those in the Sunday Times top ten rich list.
One of my nationalities has an ID card system, which can be digitized and has digital properties (e.g. to provide an authenticated signature). However,
– it is not compulsory for non-citizens
– it is not required except in very specific circumstances
– it correctly represents my sex and gender
Given the current government, it seems unlikely that any introduction of further identity documentations would be equitable or ethical.
@Stephen – a number of Australian states have ID cards – what problems have you seen with them ? They dont BTW have digital ID cards in the US
Hang on a minute.
The “sort of thing” that Harry Willcock was against, and rightly so, was the automatic demand to produce an identity card. And in saying what follows, I appreciate that as a pink-skinned straight male born in England and without a foreign accent (unless you count a bit of Brummie) I am not in the demographic likely to be troubled.
But if people in the Windrush generation had been able (at their option, if you will) to obtain a secure official ID without having to produce four separate pieces of written evidence for each calendar year they’d lived in the UK (and of course, a universal identity card wouldn’t feature such nonsense because even Theresa May wouldn’t inflict it on the likes of me) many lives would not have been wrecked. Fernando Fontoura, who came lawfully to the UK from Portugal 21 years ago and has lived, studied, worked and paid his taxes here, wouldn’t have been arrested. And so on.
Of course (as seems inevitable with this government) Labour is proposing the idea for all the wrong reasons – to facilitate a Farageiste “crackdown” on “illegal immigrants” and so on. But there just might be a liberal case for it as well.
“help identify undocumented migrants”
For shame. At a time when Labour and the Tories are doing their best to imitate Farage, how about we actually try and stand up for the majority of the country that isn’t xenophobic? Things like this are starting to creep into the parlance of the Lib Dem parliamentary team and it’s dreadful.
I am certainly not in favour of the state having lots of information about me, but the reality is, it does already. Even without ID cards the truth is that lots of information about me is already linked up across many databases and there is nothing I can do about it, unless I somehow opt out of the world as it is. Going off grid may be a theoretically exciting idea, but these days it would be almost impossible and much of our way of life would not be possible if it were. The days when I went to the bank, the post office, buying tickets, maybe even the shops have effectively gone. Facing up to that challenge and doing so in a Liberal way is very challenging. It is a discussion that we need to have. With the advent of social media and AI this is all the more urgent.
Electronic ID is not the obvious way. What is the right thing for Liberals to do?
Just an aside. Almost every country in the EU and indeed in most of Europe have photo ID cards that are not electronic that enable people to move around the EU without a passport and indeed to prove their ID. It is surely legitimate to ask how they manage to defend their civil liberties? It is clear that many European countries have a better record on this than the UK.
I am an old enough to remember when the UK had a Liberal Party which campaigned against the then “Show us your pass” apartheid regime in South Africa. What has happened to the values of that party when the parliamentarians of its successor party are advocating mandatory ID for our citizens?
What Neil Hickman says.
@Neil Hickman – Well, if you can invent a time machine and go back to issue ID to poor Fernando and the Windrush Generation….
But the lesson we should surely be taking is that if the Government wants to be seen to be performatively “tough on immigration”, or just plain cruel, an ID card is unlikely to save you from a hostile environment. Maybe even quite the opposite.
@Richard. Where is Lisa Smart or any other MP calling for mandatory ID? Indeed, she specifically says “It seems to me that any digital identity system needs to respect individual autonomy; needs to be voluntary, not compulsory; ”
If you do want to disagree with her approach – and I probably do – then please do it on the basis of what she says, not what she has very specifically rejected.
I voted for you in every election and will never vote for you again if you back digital ID. Your move.
Ive been down right shocked at the amount of so called “Liberals” who approve of digital IDs. How much surveillance, how much data do we need tracking basic day to day life.
Surely Lib Dems, should be standing up and demanding the removal of the surveillance state. The tracking of everything we do, where we travelled is something akin to Communist China, than a liberal and free democracy!
At the risk of being fashionablely patriotic Britons never never never shall be slaves [by being asked to produce papers by governments]
More seriously, one of the rules when considering this kind of legislation is to ask what might happen if one’s worst political enemy do with the legislation if they took power?
Farage in control of identity cards while stripping away human rights?
No thanks.
Contrarywise, I had lunch with a former Tory MP the other day (remainer and sympathetic) who suggested ID cards might be a necessary evil. I said that IF they were to be introduced the poelme to introduce them should be liberals, because only liberals instinctively see the evils and are therfore uniquely placed to mitigate them.
At the very least, if ID cards are to come it is well to be prepared both with arguments against AND (if they are to be imposed by a government with a majority) with ideas for mitigating the worst effects.
We already have a voluntary biometric and digitally registered ID card. It is called a passport. Currently, it is ridiculously expensive to obtain one, but if all we wanted was to make it easier for British citizens to identify themselves in various ways using a government issued document, we could call for passports to be made free. It would cost the Government about £220 million a year.
Of course, the government has no intention of setting up a purely voluntary scheme. As in 2005-6, it will want to move rapidly to compulsion. And of course as in 2005-6, we should oppose them.
I am old enough to remember the introduction of cctv and the uproar amongst Liberals. I presume those against id cards are still calling for cctv cameras to be binned? Are they putting it on their Focus leaflets?
[1] The essential principle is that the individual should provide the state with the absolute minimum of personal information. All states are, to one degree or another, intrinsically dangerous and there is no sure way for the individual to ascertain for himself or herself what is encrypted on an ID card.
[2] A voluntary ID card is useless : those with a reason to manipulate laws or services would obviously not apply. What happened in the Netherlands during the wartime German occupation was salutary: the occupying force invited the Dutch citizens to apply for an ID card. Most citizens were naive and did so. The rest, including Jewish citizens, did not and consequently, when a person’s card was demanded by the Nazi regime, it was easy to identify Jews – without cards – who could then be arrested, deported and murdered. After the war many gentile Dutch citizens commented that “we fell for it; none of us should have volunteered for the ID cards.”
[3] If the cards are compulsory the police have to have the right to demand production of them. It was that that triggered the Harry Wilcock case. In Wilcock’s appeal court case, Judge Rayner Goddard stated that this right would be detrimental and damaging to police/public relations. That is, of course, true today. Cards, whether hard copies or digital, are illiberal and should, therefore be opposed.
The last three or four times I have taken on new jobs (as a self employed contractor) I’ve had to upload a photo of my passport, a photo of my face, utility bills and even bank statements and proof of where was on certain dates to 3rd party agency apps . This is to companies who do checks for both public and private employers doing pretty bog standard work. I’d far rather have a digital id system that was less burdensome to interact with and didn’t require revealing such an amount of my private data.
Sweden has a system of physical id cards and a digital authentication app called BankID which is not government controlled but is used by people to authenticate their access to public and private services like utilities, driving schools, heathcare, chemidts etc. In my 3 year experience there it worked incredibly well, I felt in control of it, and free from bureaucracy.
So I am broadly in favour of some sort of digital id, for example for proving who you are in job applications, but not to thebpointbof being stopped in the street to “show me your card, Sir”.
I forget how many times in the past year I have been asked to provide my National Insurance number to confirm my identity. I also have an NHS number, and hospital numbers in two hospitals (which may well not communicate, so that if I end up in A&E at one of the the other may not check all my relevant medical records); and a tax number, which thankfully I only have to check once a year. Oh yes, and my passport number, which I am also asked to provide often enough to keep photocopies of my passport, some of them notarised, in my pending file. I’d prefer a digital ID that allowed me to check on the accuracy of the information that different government agencies have on file on me; the name ‘William Wallace’ is relatively common (for historical reasons), and I have been misidentified in transactions with government in the past.
A very good article. I agree with every word.
If you have one ID card for all purposes, that makes it easier for the individual but does it not also make it easier for other people in positions of power also to know more about you. Lots of cards and IDs (most of which are in principle at least voluntary) for different purposes may be very inconvenient but surely safer to protect us from those who might wish to harm us for who we are or for what we do or even say.
I was wondering why I hadn’t seen the Lib Dems viewpoint reported anywhere……. I didn’t miss much I see.
@William Wallace – no idea what you are being asked for your passport number for but I dispute how common that as as I haven’t had a valid passport for over 15 years.
@Fraser – the only requirement on employers for proof of right to work is satisfied by a passport. If they are asking for other docs it will be for internal purposes (like you being a super-secret spy you shouldnt be telling us about 🙂
Perhaps we should ‘revisit’ our policy on mass deportations and capital punishment. While we are at it, we might ‘revisit’ our policy on trial by jury, and ‘revisit’ our pro-Eu stance. Being of suspicious nature I fear a Digi-ID lobbying victory here.
I have rather swing in favour of ID cards because, as others have said, the state already has a huge amount of iformation about us relating to our finances (tax returns), health (NHS App), our address (driving licences) and so on. I am more concerned about the huge information, lightly regulated IT giants such as Meta have on us. I recently realised that within hours of my wife and I talking about an issue or what we might buy, we would be bombarded on Facebook by ads or targeted political messages. Since turning off Alexa, that has stopped.
I understand all the Liberal arguments against compulsory digital ID cards. I don’t want the state (or anyone else) to hold large amounts of information about me. Unfortunately, they already do. I have a health record that is now digital, I have a driving licence, I have a passport, I have a number of debit and credit cards, I have a mobile phone plus assorted computers and tablets, I access my banks via internet and mobile apps. I regularly have to give information to ‘prove’ who I am and that may involve a passport, a driving licence, a utility bill or a bank statement. I have a state and works pension, all of whom hold digital information about me and my banks account so they can pay me.
It is quite frightening how much information organisations have about me and how linked up it all is.
So Lisa is right, in one respect, that our current policy needs updating to take account of all these changes. That doesn’t mean the answer is digital ID.
There is one aspect of this thread that is being, deliberately, ignored. We are , almost certainly, the only EU country that does not have ID cards. How come they are able to have them and not suffer the attacks on civil liberties that successive Tory and Labour governments have inflicted on us. With the possible exception of Orban’s Hungary, they are not police states. Can we learn from them through ALDE and our sister parties across the continent?
Oops. We’re not in the EU. I meant to say Europe
“help identify undocumented migrants,”
And how will the be used in the hands of Farage, Tice and Yusuf.
Lisa is either being stupid or incredibly naive.
I am pleased to see Lisa Smart MP raise this issue.
We already have laws to prevent people who are in the UK unlawfully from working, renting property etc. They need to be easier to enforce and a digital ID scheme would facilitate that.
If you want to have work, and don’t have digital ID, you would have other means to establish your right to be here, such as production of a UK passport, or a foreign passport + UK work visa. If you cannot produce anything, you have no right to work.
Life is full of compromises. Digital ID is one of them. It could be a useful tool to enable access to services, provide identity confirmation and speed up many bureacratic processes. If however we want to use it as the sole criteria to control who lives here it would need to be compulsory and this crosses a line. Even if it wasn’t compulsory it would enable processes that distinguish those who are here legally and those who are not and so speed them up at least for those who have it.
I see from the Conference agenda that Lisa Smart’s Q&A session is at 8 am on the Sunday morning, so unfortunately I am unlikely to be there! But if Lisa or Victoria are interested, I’ve written down my views at https://drhow.substack.com/p/id-cards-on-a-loop?r=2feid8
Labour have long been edging their way back to this proposal and there hasn’t been enough debate. Any ID to be effective would have to be compulsory; expect that. If it’s not compulsory at the start it won’t be for long! The first hurdle we have to ask first what is the purpose. As labour suggest it, it’s in response to the immigration controversies raging. Yet with an unwritten constitution there is high risk of mission spread on any ID system and we know the insurers and health companies would be the beneficiaries of more widely held date so pressure for access would be high now or in the future. This is aside from privacy issues around how what individuals wish to identify or disclose.
My own experience of papers overseas has been positive, protective to my position and I’ve been tempted with the idea here but I understand that is the case now in the UK for documented non British residents. Liberals should warn of the threat to liberty, to distrust state creep AND positively argue for a fit for purpose ONS and border checks on departure to ensure we have a better understanding of who is resident here, a task that is never perfect but is a task of this government today. Why also more isn’t made of the very useful optional citizen card for those who don’t drive or have a passport.
In short work harder with what we have ! See you at 8am
The word Liberal in the party’s title doesn’t poll well so we could always drop it. It is time for Libby the logo bird to evolve too – maybe a little union Jack in her beak? We need to be where the electorate is, not just talking amongst ourselves.
Oh so now we should be frightened of calling ourselves Liberal ! Maybe we should also be frightened to go and vote. Any other daft ideas?
If people understood what Liberal means then we would have much more definition as a party and would also be setting an example in terms of having a philosophy for the way in which society should be encouraged to evolve.
Compare that to the others.
Hi Graham – I am only a few days away from the 40th anniversary of joining the Liberal Party at the age of 18.
I was attempting to lampoon a position which is clearly illiberal.
Hi Ruth – apologies for taking your comment the wrong way!
👍
I’m pleased to see this article, so thank you Lisa.
I don’t think an unthinking (even if principled) attachment to our current policy is helpful. The world, technology, have moved on. Our policy isn’t of any use if it doesn’t engage with the real world.
Compromise isn’t a dirty word. Our current policy is a compromise. One that leaves some people more digitally vulnerable than they would be if they had a better way to establish their identity online. I doubt there’s a perfect solution, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about how to deal with technology that is being widely used today.
@Roger Billins
“I am more concerned about the huge information, lightly regulated IT giants such as Meta have on us. I recently realised that within hours of my wife and I talking about an issue or what we might buy, we would be bombarded on Facebook by ads or targeted political messages.”
No-one forces you to have a facebook account.
“the Liberal Democrats led the fight against the Labour Government’s plans for compulsory ID cards”
Wasn’t the Labour legislation (ID cards Act 2006), which the Lib Dems opposed, a voluntary scheme though? Albeit that a voluntary scheme quite easily drifts into de facto effective compulsion.