UK Drops Plans for National Digital ID Card – So What?

In a not-so-dramatic U-turn of government policy, the incoming UK Prime Minister (PM), Andy Burnham, has announced that the government's proposed national digital identity scheme will be scrapped, with the £1.8 billion earmarked for the programme redirected towards other priorities.

The reversal is the latest twist in the UK's stop-start approach to national identity and may have consequences well beyond the programme itself, affecting confidence in future government-backed digital identity initiatives.

A short history of ID in the UK

The decision brings to an abrupt end a project launched by previous PM, Sir Keir Starmer, in September 2025, when the government proposed making its digital ID mandatory for right-to-work checks (see IDN October 2025). That requirement was abandoned in January 2026 following political and public opposition, although mandatory right-to-work checking remained government policy. Burnham has now gone further, cancelling the digital ID programme altogether.

The UK has a long and politically sensitive history with national identity cards. Cards were introduced during both world wars, under the National Registration Acts of 1915 and 1939, but the wartime system was formally ended in 1952 after the courts questioned the continued use of these emergency powers.

A Conservative government revisited the idea in 1995, before Labour launched an 'entitlement card' consultation in 2002. This evolved into the Identity Cards Act 2006, establishing a statutory identity card scheme and a national identity register. The project proved short-lived when the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition repealed the Act in 2010, invalidated the cards in January 2011 and destroyed the register the following month.

The UK subsequently moved towards decentralised digital identification without embracing an all-encompassing national card. That is, until the Starmer government revived the idea of a national digital ID in 2025.

What is really going on

As IDN noted in August 2025 in 'Before Building New ID Numbering Systems, Let's Use What We Have', a new government did not enter office with a blank sheet of 'digital ID' paper. Citizens already use government-held identifiers and credentials across tax, benefits, immigration and other services. The underlying question has always been whether a new national credential adds useful assurance and interoperability, or simply duplicates infrastructure that already exists.

Scrapping the proposed national digital ID does not mean scrapping digital identity. GOV.UK One Login already provides authentication and identity proofing for government services, using passports, driving licences and other recognised documents as evidence. Alongside it sits the statutory Digital Verification Services trust framework and register, supporting certified private-sector identity services for uses including right-to-work, right-to-rent and Disclosure and Barring Service checks.

The government also continues to develop the GOV.UK Wallet. Although it is not yet generally available, there are some existing examples. A digital HM Armed Forces Veteran Card can already be stored through the GOV.UK One Login app, while a digital driving licence is planned. Recently, the government opened a Wallet sandbox allowing registered verification providers to test credential issuance and verification.

The resulting digital identity landscape is therefore rather different from that implied by the cancellation headline. The UK may have abandoned a single, government-branded national digital ID, but it still has most of the components required for federated digital identity.

But there are consequences

The cancellation will nevertheless have consequences for the identity industry. Suppliers preparing technology, integration services and infrastructure specifically for a national digital ID programme have lost what was expected to be a substantial government project. More broadly, repeated changes in direction make long-term investment harder in a sector where suppliers must commit people and production capacity several years before a credential enters service.

But the requirement for secure identity has not disappeared. In fact, the decision could place greater importance on the credentials and systems the UK already has. If passports, driving licences and immigration records continue to provide the evidence from which digital identities are established, then their ability to support automated verification becomes more important, not less.

The forthcoming UK passport programme illustrates the point. HM Passport Office is procuring an end-to-end service covering secure design, manufacture and personalisation. In recent comments on the tender, UK-based secure document materials and manufacturing specialist Cardel argues that its significance extends beyond the successful passport manufacturer to the wider supply chain, including providers of advanced materials, secure personalisation technologies and production equipment [1].

Cardel's comments also highlight that the boundary between physical and digital identity is becoming increasingly blurred. A modern passport remains a highly engineered physical document, but it also contains cryptographically protected, machine-readable data and increasingly acts as trusted evidence for digital verification as well as being open to human authentication.

That convergence is precisely the territory the Optical & Digital Document Security™ conference (ODDS 2027) in Berlin will explore, bringing together materials, optical security, biometrics, cryptography, machine-readable data and system integration as interconnected parts of the same security challenge.

1 - www.linkedin.com/company/cardel-ltd/?originalSubdomain=uk