Privacy

A national digital ID could hand the government the tools for population-wide surveillance – and if history is anything to go by, ministers probably couldn't run it without cocking it up.

That's the warning from Big Brother Watch in its new "Checkpoint Britain" report, published just days after Keir Starmer confirmed the government is considering a national digital identity scheme to tackle illegal immigration.

The civil liberties group says the government's argument that digital ID will meaningfully reduce illegal immigration or employment fraud is poorly substantiated and warns that touting digital ID as a political fix for migration problems is misleading. It argues that ministers have also been far too vague about the plan's scope, which it says could easily extend beyond right-to-work and right-to-rent checks to cover "online banking, booking a train ticket, shopping on Amazon, or scheduling a GP appointment."

The result would be a "checkpoint society" where identity checks become an unavoidable part of daily life, Big Brother Watch says.