Callum Price is Director of Communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and a former Government special adviser.
The debate over ID cards in the UK is old.
The arguments for and against are long, multitudinous, and extremely well-trodden, and they have only grown longer as the prospect of a digital ID card has been rendered a real possibility by technology.
To its proponents, digital ID can do many things. It can help protect national security, deter illegal migration, improve public services and be a boon of convenience for everyday Brits.
To its detractors, digital ID has just as many flaws. It is at worst a remorseless overreach into the individual lives of law-abiding citizens and a serious infringement on our personal liberty. At best, it is another government-IT project doomed to fail, but this time with all our personal information attached together in one place.
Detractors and advocates alike will choose the arguments that they see best justify their position, let them define the specific proposal of how a digital ID should or shouldn’t work, and stick to them. Where there are multiple arguments, the others become extras, nice-to-haves, bonuses.
Not so for the government. Their latest u-turn on the compulsory nature of the digital ID has fundamentally changed their own policy to stop doing the thing it was originally designed for, and instead try to address a completely different problem.
Gone is the justification for ID cards on the grounds of strict border control by reducing the ability for illegal migrants to find work. It will no longer be mandatory in order to get employed. Instead, businesses will be told to carry on as usual (where proof of right to work is already required).
In its place is the claim that digital ID is now, first and foremost aimed at improving people’s ability to access and interface with a range of government and public services. It won’t be mandatory, the government says, but it will be useful! Regardless of what we think about which is the more persuasive argument for this particular policy, one thing is clear: this government wants to institute a system of digital ID come-what-may. The details as to how, or even why, are merely secondary.
The question comes then, why?
I think there are two answers to this. Firstly, because the government’s instincts are essentially pro-big state, inclined towards nannying, and intensively skeptical of individual liberty. They think they know best, and they want your data to help them act in accordance with that superior knowledge.
I am personally much more persuaded by the case for a digital ID on the grounds of convenience. I would quite like to have a single digital pass to access the plethora of random public services and government websites. But the way the policy has been introduced then fundamentally pivoted somewhat betrays what the government’s actual priorities are. Already skeptical of the state having even more information and being able to store it securely without accidentally leaking it to our enemies, I am now entirely unconvinced that the government has public convenience at the forefront of their thinking. This may risk me sounding like a ‘conspiracy theorist’ in the government’s eyes, but they aren’t exactly helping themselves on this front.
The other obvious answer to the question ‘why’ is because this government entered power without any guiding mission or real overarching principles, and now they are desperately looking for something to justify their existence. It is the behaviour of an end-of-days premiership, desperately lunging for something that might be defined as a legacy, even if there wasn’t a hint of in your original manifesto.
Unfortunately, when politicians do this, they rarely reach for the boring but effective levers labelled ‘a simplified, pro-growth tax code’, ‘an ambitious and stripped-down approach to regulation’, or ‘reformed public institutions that protect fundamental rights but don’t infringe upon a liberal society or dynamic economy’. Instead, they like big shiny things that will define people’s day-to-day lives, like net zero (Theresa May) and the age-ratcheting smoking ban (Rishi Sunak).
If the government really wanted to get the ‘barnacles off the boat’ in the famous words of Lynton Crosby to remove the policies that aren’t core, necessary, or working with the public, they should consider going much further on digital ID and make their partial u-turn a full one. If you drop it, you can focus on the issues that will actually make a difference to the things you say you care about, like growth and the cost of living.
But so far with this government, when even half a barnacle is lopped off the boat, two more spring up to replace it. This week we hear the government is considering proposals to ban under-18s from drinking non-alcoholic drinks (we wouldn’t want them not-drunk while they are voting, would we?), and following Australia in banning selected social media for under-16s, with the loyal backing of His Majesty’s most Loyal Opposition.
If there’s anything for opposition parties to learn from this debacle, it’s this: if you don’t set out a clear and packed agenda before ascending to power, to deliver on the receipt of a mandate at a general election, then you will be left with all barnacles and no boat.