Lewis Ormston is a chartered accountant, further education governor, and former local election candidate
In 2010, a Conservative-led government brought forward a radical agenda to transform how the state served its citizens. We established the Government Digital Service, created GOV.UK, and laid the foundations that mean we can now file a tax return and renew passports as part of daily life.
It worked. Within a few years, Britain was ranked first in the world for digital government, and countries across the globe created their own version of that.
But we didn’t finish the job.
Departments were never required to use common systems, so many built their own. Much of what was new in 2012 is legacy now. Behind GOV.UK sit hundreds of ageing systems that cannot talk to one another, and anyone who has dealt with the state knows the result: the same information supplied again and again.
Meanwhile, AI has changed what’s possible. The technology now exists to join up government and give people far more control over how the state uses their information. The question is who has the vision to do it properly.
Under Keir Starmer, Labour made a start, publishing a blueprint and launching a GOV.UK app. But its plans would have the state use citizens’ data more effectively; ours would put citizens in control of it. And since Andy Burnham took over, even that plan’s future is unclear.
This month, ConservaTech will publish Rewiring Britain: A Conservative Plan for a Smaller, Smarter, and Faster State.
Our answer is simple: one person, one government, one record. You tell government something once, and the parts of it that legitimately need to know can find out. Change your address with your GP, and you have changed it across the state.
This is not a digital ID. There is no card, no new number and no new central database. Your GP record stays with the NHS and your tax record with HMRC. A state that cannot use what it already holds is bigger, not smaller: it pays staff to re-key information it has, and suppliers to join datasets it cannot join itself.
We propose a statutory right of non-repetition. Where government already holds a fact about you, another department may not demand it again, and declining to repeat yourself can never cost you the service. Alongside it sits a citizen data ledger showing what is held about you, who accessed it, when and why. Where the law requires government to act, that use is visible; any new use is yours to permit or refuse.
The same principle applies to business. No small business owner should spend an afternoon on hold for an answer they should be able to get in one minute. We would simplify the 22,000-page tax code and give every business a single GOV.UK account combining its HMRC and Companies House records, with an AI front door and a right to rely upon HMRC’s advice.
But none of this happens without authority. GDS should return to the Cabinet Office under a minister who attends Cabinet, with its powers written into statute so it cannot be reshuffled by press release.
Government should buy by default but own the joins. If it outsources its standards and interfaces, it ends up paying rent to access its own records.
And a machine can decide, but a person must answer. Sub-postmasters were prosecuted on the evidence of a computer system they could not see or question. Every public body should publish a register of its automated systems, and how often challenges to them succeed.
The citizen data ledger is the expensive part, a decade-long programme delivered as systems are replaced, but it is what makes everything else safe.
Britain led the world in this once because a Conservative government organised the state around the people it serves. We can do it again, and create a smaller, smarter, and faster state.
You can read Rewiring Britain in full here.
Lewis Ormston is a chartered accountant, further education governor, and former local election candidate
In 2010, a Conservative-led government brought forward a radical agenda to transform how the state served its citizens. We established the Government Digital Service, created GOV.UK, and laid the foundations that mean we can now file a tax return and renew passports as part of daily life.
It worked. Within a few years, Britain was ranked first in the world for digital government, and countries across the globe created their own version of that.
But we didn’t finish the job.
Departments were never required to use common systems, so many built their own. Much of what was new in 2012 is legacy now. Behind GOV.UK sit hundreds of ageing systems that cannot talk to one another, and anyone who has dealt with the state knows the result: the same information supplied again and again.
Meanwhile, AI has changed what’s possible. The technology now exists to join up government and give people far more control over how the state uses their information. The question is who has the vision to do it properly.
Under Keir Starmer, Labour made a start, publishing a blueprint and launching a GOV.UK app. But its plans would have the state use citizens’ data more effectively; ours would put citizens in control of it. And since Andy Burnham took over, even that plan’s future is unclear.
This month, ConservaTech will publish Rewiring Britain: A Conservative Plan for a Smaller, Smarter, and Faster State.
Our answer is simple: one person, one government, one record. You tell government something once, and the parts of it that legitimately need to know can find out. Change your address with your GP, and you have changed it across the state.
This is not a digital ID. There is no card, no new number and no new central database. Your GP record stays with the NHS and your tax record with HMRC. A state that cannot use what it already holds is bigger, not smaller: it pays staff to re-key information it has, and suppliers to join datasets it cannot join itself.
We propose a statutory right of non-repetition. Where government already holds a fact about you, another department may not demand it again, and declining to repeat yourself can never cost you the service. Alongside it sits a citizen data ledger showing what is held about you, who accessed it, when and why. Where the law requires government to act, that use is visible; any new use is yours to permit or refuse.
The same principle applies to business. No small business owner should spend an afternoon on hold for an answer they should be able to get in one minute. We would simplify the 22,000-page tax code and give every business a single GOV.UK account combining its HMRC and Companies House records, with an AI front door and a right to rely upon HMRC’s advice.
But none of this happens without authority. GDS should return to the Cabinet Office under a minister who attends Cabinet, with its powers written into statute so it cannot be reshuffled by press release.
Government should buy by default but own the joins. If it outsources its standards and interfaces, it ends up paying rent to access its own records.
And a machine can decide, but a person must answer. Sub-postmasters were prosecuted on the evidence of a computer system they could not see or question. Every public body should publish a register of its automated systems, and how often challenges to them succeed.
The citizen data ledger is the expensive part, a decade-long programme delivered as systems are replaced, but it is what makes everything else safe.
Britain led the world in this once because a Conservative government organised the state around the people it serves. We can do it again, and create a smaller, smarter, and faster state.
You can read Rewiring Britain in full here.