I'm in the affected group because I'm a US citizen working in the UK. There's much more to the story because the UK has many digital ID aspects already in place-- such as for work visas and residence permits-- but these not coordinated into a whole.
What I experienced last year was many digital verification steps that were all required: open a UK bank account, sign up for a UK phone number, secure a UK residential postal address, apply for UK right-to-rent codes, generate a UK national insurance number, file for UK healthcare registration, and more.
Each step had different digital workflows and UI/UX. To traverse all these steps took hundreds of hours and a couple months wall time.
Many steps had catch-22s. The UK bank account needed a UK phone number, while the UK phone company needed a UK bank account. The UK payroll company needed a permanent residence, while the UK landlord needed UK payroll stubs. None of the steps had a quick simple way to digitally verify my UK work visa.
IMHO federation could be a big help here, such as for government agencies and government-approved businesses doing opt-in data sharing and ideally via APIs. For example, imagine each step can share its relevant information with other steps. This could make things more efficient, more accurate, and ideally more secure.
I am a bit confused about this. Is that a list of things you needed to open a bank account? Or a list of things for which you needed to show ID?
I am not sure a government digital ID would help with dealing with businesses.
Right to rent is a stupid and useless bit of bureaucracy which encourages racism - its much easier for landlords not to rent to someone who looks or sounds foreign, especially at the bottom end of the market where people might not have passports.
Edit: I should have said something like discrimination on grounds of race or national origin. The landlords are not motivated by a desire to discriminate, but to avoid have to carry out checks, especially if they do not understand the requirements with regard to visas - easier just to let to someone who (they think!) is definitely British.
> I am not sure a government digital ID would help with dealing with businesses.
I am pretty sure it would if it was allowed to. Once businesses have one usable source of ID and/or residence, they don't have to create and maintain elaborate alternative ways of establishing this information.
I come from a country where there is a national ID and lived in the UK for a while (before there was any form of electronic registration of foreign workers). I facepalmed everytime I had to interact with a business requiring ID or address, or with the government. This is a long-solved problem and they refuse to use the known, good, solution. They even managed to make a national ID into law around 2010 and then scrape it a year or so later when a new government came into power. I still can't believe it.
Can relate. The UK electronic eVisa app was pure garbage. The major redeeming feature of the UK civil service and the various regulatory quagmires is that they're effectively open source. You (or Claude) can read through their practice manuals or policies and find a work-around. But my goodness is it annoying until you figure that out. Another fascinating bit is you may think the various departments are connected but they are not. The nice looking UK Government Digital Service (GDS) Design System gives everything a veneer of connected competence, but under the bonnet, that slick UI signal is as reliable as a posh accent. Don't become a migrant if you don't have to.
And I guess people who vote for less government are people who never have dealt with good and efficient government, only government destoyed by people who don't want it to work or lobbying companies.
Where I live e-government is super smooth, like having your taxes filed for you - all you have to do is to sign it with your e-id. E-id is, as I see it, actually saftey for me as a citizen, with delegated security so that the SP only get verification and the info actually needed from the IDP.
The government is famously dysfunctional in the UK. It is unlikely to get any better. So most of us would rather they do nothing than make the situation worse.
I've lived in other countries in Europe and their government isn't that smooth either. In fact the UK was much better than Spain when I lived there, though things may have changed now.
Sorry people are downvoting you, I guess some folks think the downvote is for people they disagree with. But this is my experience too: government that works and is smooth and efficient can turn one into a fan.
People who vote for less government forget that it only empowers big businesses, whilst the protections for small business and individuals are muscled out
That's one advantage of the US' 1950s paper-based approach to everything, or at least as it was 20-odd years ago. As a non-US citizen I opened a bank account with barely any ID (no drivers license or phone number), they gave me a box of paper cheques that I had to look up online to figure out how to use because I had no idea what to do with them, I got an SSN (still not quite sure how I managed that), filed IRS tax returns, and somehow got a complete US identity and whatnot set up which seemed to be based mostly on the fact that everything was built around paper records and no-one talked to anyone else about what they had on file.
I moved from the UK to Scandinavia, where there is a federated ID (BankID) that you use to access pretty much everything and it removes all this complexity that the UK has. I can't imagine life without such an easy system. One of the downsides is that there's a bit of a catch-22 to getting an ID in the first place but once you've managed that it's done.
A key difference is the relationship between the people and the government and the motivation behind creating a federated ID. There's definitely an element of governmental monitoring to the Scandinavian model but the relationship with the government is less adversarial than in the UK.
The point is that the government tried to sell this as helping against illegal immigration by enabling effective right to work checks and this was a blatant lie since it would not change anything: right to work checks are already carried put amd legal immigrants have eVisa that are checked online by employers.
It is obvious that the government is being deceitful. Noone wants ID cards except the Tony Blair Institute.
You could get a prepaid (pay as you go) SIM for £1 from any phone service shop in a minute.
Few years ago I could get a "Passport" account from HSBC without UK phone at all and without a proof of address, I was simply asked to show my employment contract to THW clerk.
And the rest -- in the UK lives many EU citizens who are used to having the ID cards and are used to their utility. Many are VASTLY superior to what Labour was trying to impose.
The thing is, there's a fundamental difference between these and the ID card UK's Labour wanted to introduce.
It wasn't to make things EASIER. If it was, you'd get a plastic with NFC, photo, perhaps UTR or NINo and a date of birth, with a storage to keep your Oyster card or other sort of ID. Its a solved and tried problem.
It wasn't to make things safer - otherwise you could use it to sign your documents with a certificate - securely, reading your ID by your phone. You could use your ID to ANONYMOUSLY (yes) confirm your age. Not only offline (when buying alcohol as a Muslim for example), but also online.
It was openly planned to be used as a tool of control and oppression. PM was claiming it will be easier to control the pesky immigrants (lying it will make impossible employing someone illegally - lying, because Right to Work scheme is in force right noe, and its also completely online).
It was supposed to be a bind, not a tool. Only online identifier is a nightmare waiting to happen for every single European with a settled status -- NOTHING to prove legal status except for computer saying "yay". People lost job, homes, got bounced off the border because "the computer" wrongly claimed they were not legally.
THIS is what it was supposed to be in the first place.
It's okay if you don't believe me, but in that case please look up three examples: lists if features of the Estonian, Dutch and Polish ID card, what things you can do with use of either, consider the convenience and safety, and THEN compare it with only-online solution touted by the Labour, their intended use and features. Not a list of the documents it will supposedly replace, but features.
And that in XXIst century with eIDAS 2.0 in force - so the best practices available to pick and use.
Couldn't have said it better - you are 100% correct.
And yes - regarding a UK phone number: you can buy a pre-paid SIM in literally every single supermarket or corner shop / convenience store in the country like you would buy a can of Coke or a pack of chewing gum, this is a non-isue.
"There's much more to the story because the UK has many digital ID aspects already in place-- such as for work visas and residence permits-- but these not coordinated into a whole."
They're determined to bring it in and will attempt to gradually. You need an ID for so many things in the UK so it is a lie in some ways.
Photo ID is common already. Not just driving licences (with a "c") and passports, but in numerous other forms. In Scotland, young people have to prove their age continually, and they have a choice of these or state issued photo bus passes, Young Scot cards (no idea who issues these but commonly used as ID) and student IDs. They're definitely being conditioned into it.
I live in Scotland, and the scenario here is pretty similar to England.
If you live here you hear about England non-stop on the news. In fact, many papers and news channels report England-only developments as if they apply to the rest of the UK.
I generally don't pay attention to the news at all anymore (the vast majority of it is rage bait). I think the last time I paid attention to the BBC news when it was on when the Bibby Stockholm Barge was being moored in Portland. The way the news anchor was talking about it, was as if it was full of Zombies with the T-Virus on-board. While the footage just had a tugboat pulling a barge. It was utterly ridiculous.
Outside of that the news seems to be very focused on what happens in London/Westminster, Ukraine, Palestine or Trump. I don't really care about any of those.
I only pretty much care about things like Digital ID and stuff like OSA.
However Scotland (much like Northern Island) seems like it own little weird microcosm.
I don't really understand the political landscape outside of England and whenever I see statements made by the main party up there (the SNP) they seem to be utterly ridiculous jingoist anti-English nonsense that feels like it stems from Braveheart. I am not going to listen to a politician that basically painting me out to be the enemy, which is odd since most Scottish people I've spoken to are quite friendly.
I mean yeah they will have to show it if they’re buying booze, cigs, or getting a discounted travel ticket. But I don’t think that’s unreasonable, and “conditioning” feels overly dramatic.
They aren't getting a discounted travel ticket, they're getting free bus travel in return for carrying around a photo ID all the time. (I don't agree with fourteen and fifteen year olds being able to travel on the bus for free at ten or eleven at night on Friday or Saturday and getting up to no good on the public coin. It was sold to the public as a school bus replacement and/or reducing car use. It is an obvious attempt to normalise ID cards.)
To get a UK phone number, is it not enough to get a tourist plan? Most places I’ve been have tourist SIM cards at the airport, and more recently tourist eSIM plans.
It sounds like they've dropped the digital ID part being mandatory, but not the digital right-to-work checks being mandatory. I suspect that the UK will end up building something like the US's E-Verify programme, which allows a number of documents to be checked against authoritative sources. It really wouldn't be that hard to build a service that in the first instance allowed you to generate a share code with a GBR passport much the same way people can generate share codes with their drivers licenses or UKVI accounts.
What I have a problem with is just how fragmented and broken the UK immigration system is when you have the misfortune of coming into contact with it. It's (like many such large systems worldwide) a set of policies and rules that have accumulated over time into something that is pathologically poorly thought out. I'm going through the process of renewing my spouse's visa (I'm British), and it's fractally awful -- we've just had a snarky email from our landlord who is worried that the right-to-rent permission is expiring, but it's not possible to apply for a renewal for the visa prior to 28 days before expiry of her current visa. I meet all the criteria to sponsor my spouse for renewal, but the evidentiary burden is insane (I've collected 400+ pages of documents so far). Nobody wants this. It is very expensive and difficult (probably >£10k per person until permanent residency in fees, not including legal expenses) to be compliant even if you meet the criteria, which just leads people falling out of status (to borrow an American term). The government (of all stripes) tries to be "tough" but the only lever it knows how to pull is to make the rules stricter, not making them better enforced or align with some meaningful policy agenda.
This farcical situation extends into the UK's broken citizenship model where there are 6 different types of nationality, none of which give any rights you can't build through a hodgepodge of other different statuses. As far as I know the UK is the only country in the world that permits dual nationality with itself!
A government online account which can generate verifiable credentials would probably be helpful in a broad sense but it wouldn't cure bad policy which is rampant in the UK immigration sector. I'd much rather have some kind of digital ID that's clear and authoritative rather than just hoping that Experian has my details right with no recourse if they're wrong.
> This farcical situation extends into the UK's broken citizenship model where there are 6 different types of nationality, none of which give any rights you can't build through a hodgepodge of other different statuses.
There is one right. If you are British at birth they can't strip your citizenship and kick you out. Everyone else's residence is at the whim of the Home Secretary.
> If you are British at birth they can't strip your citizenship and kick you out
Not true. If you have dual nationality at birth, typically because you have one British parent and are born in the UK, then you are British at birth but the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citizenship anyway.
So, paradoxically, a child born in the UK to a British mother can end up with stronger UK citizenship rights if the mother doesn't reveal who the father is.
That's not as bad as if you are a naturalized British citizen. In that case, the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citzenship and leave you entirely stateless (you have no citizenship anywhere), which you can imagine is a very difficult status to live with.
This is what I thought until last week. Then I read the actual legislation. The 2014 changes apply to naturalised citizens. If you are born with two citizenships you aren't naturalised.
Wrong way round. She was born in the UK and was a British Citizen at birth and had a British passport
She is (maybe) entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship which is why the UK government was allowed under UK law to remove her British citizenship because British courts didn't consider her to be stateless.
The only people who can't have British citizenship removed are British citizens with no other citizenship or entitlement to a citizenship. I think in theory that means the British government is legally allowed to remove citizenship from any person from Northern Ireland if they justify it (since they're allowed to claim Irish citizenship under the Good Friday agreement).
I'm not an immigration lawyer but as I understand it: having been born in the UK as the child of Bangladeshi parents who were living here legally she was entitled to British citizenship, but she wasn't British automatically. They would have had to apply for it. As such, the politicians were able to take it away.
This is quite a recent change in the law. Prior to 2014 they could only strip citizenship if you applied and received it without having a right to it (e.g. if you were born abroad to non-British parents). After 2014 naturalised citizens (like Begum) were also liable.
I do think it is a bad law and she is being treated disgracefully. There's still hope the ECHR will sort it.
This is mainly because the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons requires it.
Of course, as a soverign, the UK is free to ignore the convention, but being able to use it to deal with the nationals of other countries is more valuable than the theoretical ability to eject (whence to?) undesired birthright-citizens.
The whole headache around good legal immigration is exactly why I left the UK after getting married. The costs, timeline and paperwork associated is insane! The US system is fairly bad too, but the rules and categories are clear cut with reasonable timelines
Also Irish citizens in Britain have the same rights as British citizens (even voting), plus all the benefits of EU citizenship too. Brexit made us second class citizens in our own country. Good job everyone.
It’s possible to have been born with multiple forms of British nationality such as being BOTC (e.g. bermudians) and a British citizen at the same time.
It’s also possible for e.g. a BNO to register for British citizenship after a period of residence in the UK. This does not extinguish the original nationality. Most hong kongers with British citizenship are in this bucket.
It really is pretty crazy that some of the more esoteric forms of citizenship have never been rolled into "British Citizen". Almost all BOTCs were given the opportunity to become British Citizens, but not all, and they kept the original status around. BNOs are similarly a somewhat silly situation especially now that it's possible to move to the UK on the special BNO visa (which gives them different/better family reunion rights than normal British citizens). British Subjects essentially don't exist in practice, but they also haven't just rolled that into British Citizen status either (British Subject is the residual status of certain Irish born people who chose to retain the status - they have the right to live in the UK on the basis of their Irish nationality, not on their British nationality which is insane). There's just a perpetual allergy to just rationalising the whole setup.
It would be perfectly politically acceptable to just do away with the statuses that have fewer than say 5000 people and grant them all full-fat citizenship. Generally people who live in the UK are shocked when they find out that holding a British passport does not entitle you to the right to live in the UK.
While that is great, the lobbyists who disguise as politicians who tried to sneak this in, need to permanently leave ALL affiliations to politics. Politics right now in the UK is just a lobbyist sleaze fest.
They are still trying to bring in digital ID. There are multiple attempts to push it. They still plan to try to push it as a convenience. They also plan a digital ID for children.
Not sure what invoking children here does for the sake of argumentation.
Digital ID is not bad; the issue is the implementation of digital ID that will cause huge issues such as giving billions of pounds to friends of MPs
> Not sure what invoking children here does for the sake of argumentation.
Because by requiring children, but not adults, to have digital ID as part of a much larger (and pretty terrible) law that is already close to being passed and disguising it as a safeguarding measure they are sneaking it in for some people AND getting the next generation used to it.
> Digital ID is not bad;
The opposition to digital ID is largely coming from people who do think Digital ID is bad.
Digital ID is a very wishy-washy concept that has been co-opted by various groups to make strong statements about government overreach. If you want to make criticism you should make narrower statements, for example.
A centralized ID system that can be used to safely verify the authenticity of a presenting party is good!
If that system can be used to track this person in more invasive ways than already possible with IMSI catchers, credit cards and facial recognition that is bad!
People think Digital ID is bad and this everlasting evil concept that will further make the most surveilled country in the world an Orwellian nightmare overnight which is a dramatization. The devil is really in the details here and depending on what flavors of implementation determines the "goodness"
Covid and lockdown did happen, as did vaccine passports. All of these were used to push and normalise certain practices. The ruling classes want to get all this in by the 2030s.
You attempted to move the goalposts. You talk about the early 2020s as if everything that went on was normal and acceptable, and not contradictory at all.
Real quackery is allowing people to go to the supermarket all the time, but disallowing them to exercise in the park. Or telling people not to talk to their neighbours over the fence but allowing international flights to continue.
I remember walking on a local government run public golf course once so that I could exercise well away from people, only to have someone come within two metres of me telling me I was endangering them. Yet my local supermarket had dozens of people wandering around inside it. I'm told those kind of contradictions were normal.
You know fine well that many places encouraged their citizens to download apps onto their phones for QR codes or tracking their location. That was publicly advertised in many of them by TV.
>Real quackery is allowing people to go to the supermarket all the time but disallowing them to exercise in the park. Or telling people not to talk to their neighbors over the fence but allowing international flights to continue.
Supermarket is critical for food, not exercising in the park for a couple of weeks is NOT going to kill you
>I remember walking on a local government run public golf course once so that I could exercise well away from people, only to have someone come within two metres of me telling me I was endangering them. Yet my local supermarket had dozens of people wandering around inside it. I'm told those kind of contradictions were normal.
The government response in hindsight was probably overblown in terms of risk management but for the most part in the UK the actions taken reduced the spread until the vaccine and other infrastructure was in place so I would say it succeeded. All of the rules, regulations and laws have been rolled back/unwound and society is back to normal.
>You know fine well that many places encouraged their citizens to download apps onto their phones for QR codes or tracking their location. That was publicly advertised in many of them by TV.
"The app has been designed with user privacy in mind, so it tracks the virus not people, and uses the latest in data security technology to protect privacy. The system generates a random ID for an individual’s device, which can be exchanged between devices via Bluetooth (not GPS). These unique random IDs regenerate frequently to add an extra layer of security and preserve anonymity. "
There was no legal requirement to download the app and use it just FYI
The Brits should be grateful that a government with such horrible ideas is comically incompetent. Sometimes just keeping the status quo is a good thing. Having a government that just constantly enacts legislation isn’t necessarily good.
A useless government is preferable to an even moderately competent tyrannical one.
If you ignore all the big red flags, it _is_ an attractive and convenient idea. One ID for all my government services? Useful. The devil, as always, is in the details
Anyone with half a brain can see it could be a good idea. Everything else is online, why shouldn't ID be? Better to send a validated token to companies doing KYC than actual PII. And that's before you get into the illegal immigration, right to work, etc.
I really don't understand the arguments against it. You don't think the State can't shut you down if you break the law already?
"... Labour MPs are growing increasingly frustrated with the government's U-turns.
Some had already been wary of defending controversial government policies to their constituents because they feared that the policy would inevitably be reversed."
which implies that the MPs are openly admitting that they don't state their personal opinions, merely parrot the party line, but are frustrated when they are required to abruptly change the things they claim to believe in.
What a farce. Members of parliament should have their OWN fucking views about things, and defend or debate those views on behalf of the people they represent.
That why they have party whips and threaten deselections for people that have their own ideas.
Many of these people would not be in Parliament if they weren't selected by the party. Most people vote for a party, not the MP. So why would it benefit the MP to have their own views when they can just parrot whatever they've been told to? It doesn't.
There is always something in the UK where I find out something utterly ridiculous is allowed, yet they are quite happy to legislate thousands of other things.
They became so bad so quickly and now all that's happening is more and more people swearing never to vote Labour again.
This is leaving the door open for Reform at the next election.
A useless government lacking any sort of leadership. At a stroke this would destroy illegal immigration if it was mandatory and tied to receiving benefits.
When I lived in the UK in the early-mid 00s, I was really confused by how much of a digital backwater it was. Opening a bank account required several months of utility bills (on paper!) with my name as "proof of address". Taxes were paper only. Paper payslips. No concept of interacting with the government in any digital way. No concept of government ID other than a full size passport, which made the many silly age checks in pubs and stores rather laughable.
I'm sure things have gotten better, but I'll never forget how backwards it all seemed coming from puny Belgium.
The UK has had internet filing for self-assessment taxes since July 2000 [1]. I started doing freelance web consulting around them while at university and filed online. It was considerably easier than filing my taxes in the US is now! (Most people in the UK don't have to file taxes at all since the right amount of tax is withheld by their employer.)
While the UK might not have been the first, there was a big push to move government services online over the 2000s. I think this may have been easier than in other countries since so many services were run by post rather than requiring you to go to a particular government office.
Opening a bank account became much more difficult in the early 2000s because of the money laundering/terrorism financing legislation. It became a real pain for international students when I worked in a student union back then.
The liberal resistance to ID cards in Britain was more reasonable before it became required to prove your identity so often. Not having an ID card has become a bit of a pain now, especially for elderly people who may not have a driving licence or current passport.
Things for sure are better, once you are kinda on the digital ladder with various things its ok. Drivers License, NI Number, Passport and Proof of address documents are all fairly trivial to get
Payslips are fully automated and there is a nice HMRC app that lets you see your PAYE income. Also, the NHS app is not half bad, you can mostly access any previous information but its not always fully populated due to a mixed bag of records
When I lived in Spain getting my NIE number was a pain as the office was open for 2 hours in the morning. Luckily I was with an English person that spoke Spanish that helped me fill out the forms.
All this rigor for a country without an actual formalised constitution. I mean, maybe the government should work on that first and make sure it has a right to work there first?
> Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify ... thus it is known as an uncodified constitution.
Arguably it's purpose is to define where government responsibility ends and tyranny begins. Very useful if the population it applies to cares about it being violated
Seen that the entire plan of the UK atm apparently relies on bringing in as many illegals as possible in the shortest time possible, I don't see how that'd be compatible with a mandatory digital ID.
> Seen that the entire plan of the UK atm apparently relies on bringing in as many illegals as possible in the shortest time possible
Could you say a bit more about this? I didn't find it in their manifesto from the last election. Is it a new policy? Do you know which minister is responsible?
It's completely in the current gov's power to stop all illegal immigration and to stem the flow of legal immigration. For whatever reason I cannot fathom, they do not enact that power.
At some point we have to stop blaming the previous government.
I'm in the affected group because I'm a US citizen working in the UK. There's much more to the story because the UK has many digital ID aspects already in place-- such as for work visas and residence permits-- but these not coordinated into a whole.
What I experienced last year was many digital verification steps that were all required: open a UK bank account, sign up for a UK phone number, secure a UK residential postal address, apply for UK right-to-rent codes, generate a UK national insurance number, file for UK healthcare registration, and more.
Each step had different digital workflows and UI/UX. To traverse all these steps took hundreds of hours and a couple months wall time.
Many steps had catch-22s. The UK bank account needed a UK phone number, while the UK phone company needed a UK bank account. The UK payroll company needed a permanent residence, while the UK landlord needed UK payroll stubs. None of the steps had a quick simple way to digitally verify my UK work visa.
IMHO federation could be a big help here, such as for government agencies and government-approved businesses doing opt-in data sharing and ideally via APIs. For example, imagine each step can share its relevant information with other steps. This could make things more efficient, more accurate, and ideally more secure.
I am a bit confused about this. Is that a list of things you needed to open a bank account? Or a list of things for which you needed to show ID?
I am not sure a government digital ID would help with dealing with businesses.
Right to rent is a stupid and useless bit of bureaucracy which encourages racism - its much easier for landlords not to rent to someone who looks or sounds foreign, especially at the bottom end of the market where people might not have passports.
Edit: I should have said something like discrimination on grounds of race or national origin. The landlords are not motivated by a desire to discriminate, but to avoid have to carry out checks, especially if they do not understand the requirements with regard to visas - easier just to let to someone who (they think!) is definitely British.
> I am not sure a government digital ID would help with dealing with businesses.
A central gov ID means that, for example, the bank don't ask for proof of address by requesting months of utility bills,
> Right to rent is a stupid and useless bit of bureaucracy
It can be abused but arguably serves a purpose. Landlords can already just refuse foreign-looking tenants if they want.
> I am not sure a government digital ID would help with dealing with businesses.
I am pretty sure it would if it was allowed to. Once businesses have one usable source of ID and/or residence, they don't have to create and maintain elaborate alternative ways of establishing this information.
I come from a country where there is a national ID and lived in the UK for a while (before there was any form of electronic registration of foreign workers). I facepalmed everytime I had to interact with a business requiring ID or address, or with the government. This is a long-solved problem and they refuse to use the known, good, solution. They even managed to make a national ID into law around 2010 and then scrape it a year or so later when a new government came into power. I still can't believe it.
Can relate. The UK electronic eVisa app was pure garbage. The major redeeming feature of the UK civil service and the various regulatory quagmires is that they're effectively open source. You (or Claude) can read through their practice manuals or policies and find a work-around. But my goodness is it annoying until you figure that out. Another fascinating bit is you may think the various departments are connected but they are not. The nice looking UK Government Digital Service (GDS) Design System gives everything a veneer of connected competence, but under the bonnet, that slick UI signal is as reliable as a posh accent. Don't become a migrant if you don't have to.
People who vote for more government are people who rarely deal with government.
And I guess people who vote for less government are people who never have dealt with good and efficient government, only government destoyed by people who don't want it to work or lobbying companies.
Where I live e-government is super smooth, like having your taxes filed for you - all you have to do is to sign it with your e-id. E-id is, as I see it, actually saftey for me as a citizen, with delegated security so that the SP only get verification and the info actually needed from the IDP.
Although requiring it for porn is just sick.
The government is famously dysfunctional in the UK. It is unlikely to get any better. So most of us would rather they do nothing than make the situation worse.
I've lived in other countries in Europe and their government isn't that smooth either. In fact the UK was much better than Spain when I lived there, though things may have changed now.
Sorry people are downvoting you, I guess some folks think the downvote is for people they disagree with. But this is my experience too: government that works and is smooth and efficient can turn one into a fan.
People who vote for less government forget that it only empowers big businesses, whilst the protections for small business and individuals are muscled out
That's one advantage of the US' 1950s paper-based approach to everything, or at least as it was 20-odd years ago. As a non-US citizen I opened a bank account with barely any ID (no drivers license or phone number), they gave me a box of paper cheques that I had to look up online to figure out how to use because I had no idea what to do with them, I got an SSN (still not quite sure how I managed that), filed IRS tax returns, and somehow got a complete US identity and whatnot set up which seemed to be based mostly on the fact that everything was built around paper records and no-one talked to anyone else about what they had on file.
I moved from the UK to Scandinavia, where there is a federated ID (BankID) that you use to access pretty much everything and it removes all this complexity that the UK has. I can't imagine life without such an easy system. One of the downsides is that there's a bit of a catch-22 to getting an ID in the first place but once you've managed that it's done.
A key difference is the relationship between the people and the government and the motivation behind creating a federated ID. There's definitely an element of governmental monitoring to the Scandinavian model but the relationship with the government is less adversarial than in the UK.
The point is that the government tried to sell this as helping against illegal immigration by enabling effective right to work checks and this was a blatant lie since it would not change anything: right to work checks are already carried put amd legal immigrants have eVisa that are checked online by employers.
It is obvious that the government is being deceitful. Noone wants ID cards except the Tony Blair Institute.
Some of these catch 22 issues were self imposed.
You could get a prepaid (pay as you go) SIM for £1 from any phone service shop in a minute.
Few years ago I could get a "Passport" account from HSBC without UK phone at all and without a proof of address, I was simply asked to show my employment contract to THW clerk.
And the rest -- in the UK lives many EU citizens who are used to having the ID cards and are used to their utility. Many are VASTLY superior to what Labour was trying to impose.
The thing is, there's a fundamental difference between these and the ID card UK's Labour wanted to introduce.
It wasn't to make things EASIER. If it was, you'd get a plastic with NFC, photo, perhaps UTR or NINo and a date of birth, with a storage to keep your Oyster card or other sort of ID. Its a solved and tried problem.
It wasn't to make things safer - otherwise you could use it to sign your documents with a certificate - securely, reading your ID by your phone. You could use your ID to ANONYMOUSLY (yes) confirm your age. Not only offline (when buying alcohol as a Muslim for example), but also online.
It was openly planned to be used as a tool of control and oppression. PM was claiming it will be easier to control the pesky immigrants (lying it will make impossible employing someone illegally - lying, because Right to Work scheme is in force right noe, and its also completely online).
It was supposed to be a bind, not a tool. Only online identifier is a nightmare waiting to happen for every single European with a settled status -- NOTHING to prove legal status except for computer saying "yay". People lost job, homes, got bounced off the border because "the computer" wrongly claimed they were not legally.
THIS is what it was supposed to be in the first place.
It's okay if you don't believe me, but in that case please look up three examples: lists if features of the Estonian, Dutch and Polish ID card, what things you can do with use of either, consider the convenience and safety, and THEN compare it with only-online solution touted by the Labour, their intended use and features. Not a list of the documents it will supposedly replace, but features.
And that in XXIst century with eIDAS 2.0 in force - so the best practices available to pick and use.
But no, Britain gonna Britain...
Couldn't have said it better - you are 100% correct.
And yes - regarding a UK phone number: you can buy a pre-paid SIM in literally every single supermarket or corner shop / convenience store in the country like you would buy a can of Coke or a pack of chewing gum, this is a non-isue.
"There's much more to the story because the UK has many digital ID aspects already in place-- such as for work visas and residence permits-- but these not coordinated into a whole."
They're determined to bring it in and will attempt to gradually. You need an ID for so many things in the UK so it is a lie in some ways.
I haven't shown my photocard drivers license in literally years to anyone, other than renewing it.
I normally just use Birthcert and Utility bills.
Photo ID is common already. Not just driving licences (with a "c") and passports, but in numerous other forms. In Scotland, young people have to prove their age continually, and they have a choice of these or state issued photo bus passes, Young Scot cards (no idea who issues these but commonly used as ID) and student IDs. They're definitely being conditioned into it.
TBH, I don't care generally what happens up in Scotland.
I live in Scotland, and the scenario here is pretty similar to England.
If you live here you hear about England non-stop on the news. In fact, many papers and news channels report England-only developments as if they apply to the rest of the UK.
I generally don't pay attention to the news at all anymore (the vast majority of it is rage bait). I think the last time I paid attention to the BBC news when it was on when the Bibby Stockholm Barge was being moored in Portland. The way the news anchor was talking about it, was as if it was full of Zombies with the T-Virus on-board. While the footage just had a tugboat pulling a barge. It was utterly ridiculous.
Outside of that the news seems to be very focused on what happens in London/Westminster, Ukraine, Palestine or Trump. I don't really care about any of those.
I only pretty much care about things like Digital ID and stuff like OSA.
However Scotland (much like Northern Island) seems like it own little weird microcosm.
I don't really understand the political landscape outside of England and whenever I see statements made by the main party up there (the SNP) they seem to be utterly ridiculous jingoist anti-English nonsense that feels like it stems from Braveheart. I am not going to listen to a politician that basically painting me out to be the enemy, which is odd since most Scottish people I've spoken to are quite friendly.
I mean yeah they will have to show it if they’re buying booze, cigs, or getting a discounted travel ticket. But I don’t think that’s unreasonable, and “conditioning” feels overly dramatic.
Would you rather there were no age checks?
They aren't getting a discounted travel ticket, they're getting free bus travel in return for carrying around a photo ID all the time. (I don't agree with fourteen and fifteen year olds being able to travel on the bus for free at ten or eleven at night on Friday or Saturday and getting up to no good on the public coin. It was sold to the public as a school bus replacement and/or reducing car use. It is an obvious attempt to normalise ID cards.)
To get a UK phone number, is it not enough to get a tourist plan? Most places I’ve been have tourist SIM cards at the airport, and more recently tourist eSIM plans.
It’s not a bad idea necessarily, unfortunately it would just be a massive political own goal in the current environment.
It sounds like they've dropped the digital ID part being mandatory, but not the digital right-to-work checks being mandatory. I suspect that the UK will end up building something like the US's E-Verify programme, which allows a number of documents to be checked against authoritative sources. It really wouldn't be that hard to build a service that in the first instance allowed you to generate a share code with a GBR passport much the same way people can generate share codes with their drivers licenses or UKVI accounts.
What I have a problem with is just how fragmented and broken the UK immigration system is when you have the misfortune of coming into contact with it. It's (like many such large systems worldwide) a set of policies and rules that have accumulated over time into something that is pathologically poorly thought out. I'm going through the process of renewing my spouse's visa (I'm British), and it's fractally awful -- we've just had a snarky email from our landlord who is worried that the right-to-rent permission is expiring, but it's not possible to apply for a renewal for the visa prior to 28 days before expiry of her current visa. I meet all the criteria to sponsor my spouse for renewal, but the evidentiary burden is insane (I've collected 400+ pages of documents so far). Nobody wants this. It is very expensive and difficult (probably >£10k per person until permanent residency in fees, not including legal expenses) to be compliant even if you meet the criteria, which just leads people falling out of status (to borrow an American term). The government (of all stripes) tries to be "tough" but the only lever it knows how to pull is to make the rules stricter, not making them better enforced or align with some meaningful policy agenda.
This farcical situation extends into the UK's broken citizenship model where there are 6 different types of nationality, none of which give any rights you can't build through a hodgepodge of other different statuses. As far as I know the UK is the only country in the world that permits dual nationality with itself!
A government online account which can generate verifiable credentials would probably be helpful in a broad sense but it wouldn't cure bad policy which is rampant in the UK immigration sector. I'd much rather have some kind of digital ID that's clear and authoritative rather than just hoping that Experian has my details right with no recourse if they're wrong.
> This farcical situation extends into the UK's broken citizenship model where there are 6 different types of nationality, none of which give any rights you can't build through a hodgepodge of other different statuses.
There is one right. If you are British at birth they can't strip your citizenship and kick you out. Everyone else's residence is at the whim of the Home Secretary.
> If you are British at birth they can't strip your citizenship and kick you out
Not true. If you have dual nationality at birth, typically because you have one British parent and are born in the UK, then you are British at birth but the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citizenship anyway.
So, paradoxically, a child born in the UK to a British mother can end up with stronger UK citizenship rights if the mother doesn't reveal who the father is.
That's not as bad as if you are a naturalized British citizen. In that case, the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citzenship and leave you entirely stateless (you have no citizenship anywhere), which you can imagine is a very difficult status to live with.
This is what I thought until last week. Then I read the actual legislation. The 2014 changes apply to naturalised citizens. If you are born with two citizenships you aren't naturalised.
Not heard of Shamima Begum?
British born, stripped of citizenship
I’m not commenting on the rightness or not of her case, just pointing out that being born British is not necessarily the guarantee you are describing
She was entitled to citizenship but she wasn't born with it. My cousin's children were in a similar position having been born outside the UK.
Wrong way round. She was born in the UK and was a British Citizen at birth and had a British passport
She is (maybe) entitled to Bangladeshi citizenship which is why the UK government was allowed under UK law to remove her British citizenship because British courts didn't consider her to be stateless.
The only people who can't have British citizenship removed are British citizens with no other citizenship or entitlement to a citizenship. I think in theory that means the British government is legally allowed to remove citizenship from any person from Northern Ireland if they justify it (since they're allowed to claim Irish citizenship under the Good Friday agreement).
At birth she was entitled to citizenship but she wasn't a citizen. Like my cousins. I describe the nuance in my other comments on this thread.
According to Wikipedia she was born in Britain and a British citizen, but i am not aware of all the ins and outs of her case
I'm not an immigration lawyer but as I understand it: having been born in the UK as the child of Bangladeshi parents who were living here legally she was entitled to British citizenship, but she wasn't British automatically. They would have had to apply for it. As such, the politicians were able to take it away.
This is quite a recent change in the law. Prior to 2014 they could only strip citizenship if you applied and received it without having a right to it (e.g. if you were born abroad to non-British parents). After 2014 naturalised citizens (like Begum) were also liable.
I do think it is a bad law and she is being treated disgracefully. There's still hope the ECHR will sort it.
This is mainly because the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons requires it.
Of course, as a soverign, the UK is free to ignore the convention, but being able to use it to deal with the nationals of other countries is more valuable than the theoretical ability to eject (whence to?) undesired birthright-citizens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_Relating_to_the_Sta...
The whole headache around good legal immigration is exactly why I left the UK after getting married. The costs, timeline and paperwork associated is insane! The US system is fairly bad too, but the rules and categories are clear cut with reasonable timelines
Also Irish citizens in Britain have the same rights as British citizens (even voting), plus all the benefits of EU citizenship too. Brexit made us second class citizens in our own country. Good job everyone.
> As far as I know the UK is the only country in the world that permits dual nationality with itself!
How does one apply for this?
It’s possible to have been born with multiple forms of British nationality such as being BOTC (e.g. bermudians) and a British citizen at the same time.
It’s also possible for e.g. a BNO to register for British citizenship after a period of residence in the UK. This does not extinguish the original nationality. Most hong kongers with British citizenship are in this bucket.
Oh right, so it's British Empire vs British mainland citizenship.
Yeah, it's not as crazy as they make it sound. They're also technically a Commonwealth citizen and previously an EU citizen.
Not exactly two citizenships of the same country.
It really is pretty crazy that some of the more esoteric forms of citizenship have never been rolled into "British Citizen". Almost all BOTCs were given the opportunity to become British Citizens, but not all, and they kept the original status around. BNOs are similarly a somewhat silly situation especially now that it's possible to move to the UK on the special BNO visa (which gives them different/better family reunion rights than normal British citizens). British Subjects essentially don't exist in practice, but they also haven't just rolled that into British Citizen status either (British Subject is the residual status of certain Irish born people who chose to retain the status - they have the right to live in the UK on the basis of their Irish nationality, not on their British nationality which is insane). There's just a perpetual allergy to just rationalising the whole setup.
It would be perfectly politically acceptable to just do away with the statuses that have fewer than say 5000 people and grant them all full-fat citizenship. Generally people who live in the UK are shocked when they find out that holding a British passport does not entitle you to the right to live in the UK.
While that is great, the lobbyists who disguise as politicians who tried to sneak this in, need to permanently leave ALL affiliations to politics. Politics right now in the UK is just a lobbyist sleaze fest.
You know the UK desperately needs to spend billions on a never ending software project with some awful agencies building the impossible.
Let’s give it to Fujitsu! What could go wrong?
They are still trying to bring in digital ID. There are multiple attempts to push it. They still plan to try to push it as a convenience. They also plan a digital ID for children.
Not sure what invoking children here does for the sake of argumentation. Digital ID is not bad; the issue is the implementation of digital ID that will cause huge issues such as giving billions of pounds to friends of MPs
> Not sure what invoking children here does for the sake of argumentation.
Because by requiring children, but not adults, to have digital ID as part of a much larger (and pretty terrible) law that is already close to being passed and disguising it as a safeguarding measure they are sneaking it in for some people AND getting the next generation used to it.
> Digital ID is not bad;
The opposition to digital ID is largely coming from people who do think Digital ID is bad.
Digital ID is a very wishy-washy concept that has been co-opted by various groups to make strong statements about government overreach. If you want to make criticism you should make narrower statements, for example.
A centralized ID system that can be used to safely verify the authenticity of a presenting party is good!
If that system can be used to track this person in more invasive ways than already possible with IMSI catchers, credit cards and facial recognition that is bad!
People think Digital ID is bad and this everlasting evil concept that will further make the most surveilled country in the world an Orwellian nightmare overnight which is a dramatization. The devil is really in the details here and depending on what flavors of implementation determines the "goodness"
Digital ID alone is not the endgoal but a system that will encompass every aspect of people's lives, and can be switched off in an instant.
I heard the same hogwash over covid and vaccine passports, it didn't happen.
Covid and lockdown did happen, as did vaccine passports. All of these were used to push and normalise certain practices. The ruling classes want to get all this in by the 2030s.
Proof, evidence or anything other than you just moving the goalpost on conspiracy quackery?
You attempted to move the goalposts. You talk about the early 2020s as if everything that went on was normal and acceptable, and not contradictory at all.
Real quackery is allowing people to go to the supermarket all the time, but disallowing them to exercise in the park. Or telling people not to talk to their neighbours over the fence but allowing international flights to continue.
I remember walking on a local government run public golf course once so that I could exercise well away from people, only to have someone come within two metres of me telling me I was endangering them. Yet my local supermarket had dozens of people wandering around inside it. I'm told those kind of contradictions were normal.
You know fine well that many places encouraged their citizens to download apps onto their phones for QR codes or tracking their location. That was publicly advertised in many of them by TV.
You make stuff like this too easy
>Real quackery is allowing people to go to the supermarket all the time but disallowing them to exercise in the park. Or telling people not to talk to their neighbors over the fence but allowing international flights to continue.
Supermarket is critical for food, not exercising in the park for a couple of weeks is NOT going to kill you
>I remember walking on a local government run public golf course once so that I could exercise well away from people, only to have someone come within two metres of me telling me I was endangering them. Yet my local supermarket had dozens of people wandering around inside it. I'm told those kind of contradictions were normal.
The government response in hindsight was probably overblown in terms of risk management but for the most part in the UK the actions taken reduced the spread until the vaccine and other infrastructure was in place so I would say it succeeded. All of the rules, regulations and laws have been rolled back/unwound and society is back to normal.
>You know fine well that many places encouraged their citizens to download apps onto their phones for QR codes or tracking their location. That was publicly advertised in many of them by TV.
https://transform.england.nhs.uk/covid-19-response/nhs-covid...
"The app has been designed with user privacy in mind, so it tracks the virus not people, and uses the latest in data security technology to protect privacy. The system generates a random ID for an individual’s device, which can be exchanged between devices via Bluetooth (not GPS). These unique random IDs regenerate frequently to add an extra layer of security and preserve anonymity. "
There was no legal requirement to download the app and use it just FYI
It can be called digital fascism. Everyone gets monitored now. Big government loves you.
The Brits should be grateful that a government with such horrible ideas is comically incompetent. Sometimes just keeping the status quo is a good thing. Having a government that just constantly enacts legislation isn’t necessarily good.
A useless government is preferable to an even moderately competent tyrannical one.
The headline is a bit misleading.
What they have done is drop the requirement for a single specific digital ID.
However they haven't dropped the requirement for a digital ID to work - you just have options between more than one digital ID.
For now.
For whatever reason, Tony Blair's think tank is obsessed with this idea[1]. As I understand he still has a lot of influence over British politics.
[1] https://institute.global/digital-id-what-is-it-and-how-it-wo...
> For whatever reason, Tony Blair's think tank is obsessed with this idea.
Probably considers it as unfinished business from his administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
If you ignore all the big red flags, it _is_ an attractive and convenient idea. One ID for all my government services? Useful. The devil, as always, is in the details
There are absolutely ways to implement a digital ID system that is not soaking wet with red flags. See the following: https://www.eid.admin.ch/en/swiyu-coming-soon-e
It doesn't originate with him, it is being phased in internationally. It's obviously been discussed far more widely.
It may not originate with Tony Blair, but he might be the one trying to get it passed in the UK specifically.
William Hague is pushing for it too.
Anyone with half a brain can see it could be a good idea. Everything else is online, why shouldn't ID be? Better to send a validated token to companies doing KYC than actual PII. And that's before you get into the illegal immigration, right to work, etc.
I really don't understand the arguments against it. You don't think the State can't shut you down if you break the law already?
Shame. This made a lot of sense.
> existing checks, using documents such as biometric passports, will move fully online by 2029.
Well I guess that's good at least. I imagine they'll just assign people "digital passports" at some point and you just pay to get a paper copy.
This line was particluarly interesting:
"... Labour MPs are growing increasingly frustrated with the government's U-turns.
Some had already been wary of defending controversial government policies to their constituents because they feared that the policy would inevitably be reversed."
which implies that the MPs are openly admitting that they don't state their personal opinions, merely parrot the party line, but are frustrated when they are required to abruptly change the things they claim to believe in.
What a farce. Members of parliament should have their OWN fucking views about things, and defend or debate those views on behalf of the people they represent.
That why they have party whips and threaten deselections for people that have their own ideas.
Many of these people would not be in Parliament if they weren't selected by the party. Most people vote for a party, not the MP. So why would it benefit the MP to have their own views when they can just parrot whatever they've been told to? It doesn't.
The most ridiculous thing about UK politics is that there is zero residency requirement.
There is always something in the UK where I find out something utterly ridiculous is allowed, yet they are quite happy to legislate thousands of other things.
Those people get deselected by the NEC.
But they are still going ahead with digital id!?
It's almost comical how bad this Labour government is...
They became so bad so quickly and now all that's happening is more and more people swearing never to vote Labour again. This is leaving the door open for Reform at the next election.
They won't be any better. Farage is ultimately untrustworthy.
A useless government lacking any sort of leadership. At a stroke this would destroy illegal immigration if it was mandatory and tied to receiving benefits.
“Government walks back plan to become surveillance state after everyone mad about it”
Now they will just make it very hard for those who opt out.
[dead]
When I lived in the UK in the early-mid 00s, I was really confused by how much of a digital backwater it was. Opening a bank account required several months of utility bills (on paper!) with my name as "proof of address". Taxes were paper only. Paper payslips. No concept of interacting with the government in any digital way. No concept of government ID other than a full size passport, which made the many silly age checks in pubs and stores rather laughable.
I'm sure things have gotten better, but I'll never forget how backwards it all seemed coming from puny Belgium.
The UK has had internet filing for self-assessment taxes since July 2000 [1]. I started doing freelance web consulting around them while at university and filed online. It was considerably easier than filing my taxes in the US is now! (Most people in the UK don't have to file taxes at all since the right amount of tax is withheld by their employer.)
While the UK might not have been the first, there was a big push to move government services online over the 2000s. I think this may have been easier than in other countries since so many services were run by post rather than requiring you to go to a particular government office.
Opening a bank account became much more difficult in the early 2000s because of the money laundering/terrorism financing legislation. It became a real pain for international students when I worked in a student union back then.
The liberal resistance to ID cards in Britain was more reasonable before it became required to prove your identity so often. Not having an ID card has become a bit of a pain now, especially for elderly people who may not have a driving licence or current passport.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fascinating-facts-about-s...
Things for sure are better, once you are kinda on the digital ladder with various things its ok. Drivers License, NI Number, Passport and Proof of address documents are all fairly trivial to get
Payslips are fully automated and there is a nice HMRC app that lets you see your PAYE income. Also, the NHS app is not half bad, you can mostly access any previous information but its not always fully populated due to a mixed bag of records
> No concept of government ID other than a full size passport, which made the many silly age checks in pubs and stores rather laughable.
Memorising your Birthday to be 2 years earlier to fool the pub bouncer was what we all did.
Hmm try Italy or Spain…
Spain was finally forced to improve some of their systems during covid. Its still a bit of a mess, but at least you can do some things online now.
When I lived in Spain getting my NIE number was a pain as the office was open for 2 hours in the morning. Luckily I was with an English person that spoke Spanish that helped me fill out the forms.
All this rigor for a country without an actual formalised constitution. I mean, maybe the government should work on that first and make sure it has a right to work there first?
> Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify ... thus it is known as an uncodified constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
Based on recent events, I wouldn't suggest a constitution makes much of a difference to an adversarial government.
This. The illusion that you could fend off tyranny with a piece of paper was always a bit ridiculous, and it shows.
Arguably it's purpose is to define where government responsibility ends and tyranny begins. Very useful if the population it applies to cares about it being violated
The Magna Carta was meant to formalise that spec 800 years ago.
I suspect there is a hysteresis loop - it has to get really bad before the population changes phase.
their goal is to expand the orwellian spying panopticon, not to codify people's rights.
How's that piece of paper working out for you guys right now?
I'm sorry but how is this relevant? Or did you just recently learn this and thought it's "interesting" to share?
They want to have rigorous well-indexed system for the people in a country, when the system of the country isn't rigorous.
When your constitution is ad hoc, it seems only fair that everything else is. Start with the foundation before formalising everything else.
Seen that the entire plan of the UK atm apparently relies on bringing in as many illegals as possible in the shortest time possible, I don't see how that'd be compatible with a mandatory digital ID.
So I'm not surprised to see this trashed.
> Seen that the entire plan of the UK atm apparently relies on bringing in as many illegals as possible in the shortest time possible
Could you say a bit more about this? I didn't find it in their manifesto from the last election. Is it a new policy? Do you know which minister is responsible?
You are thinking of the party that was previously in government.
It's completely in the current gov's power to stop all illegal immigration and to stem the flow of legal immigration. For whatever reason I cannot fathom, they do not enact that power.
At some point we have to stop blaming the previous government.
The people who fronted the brexit campaign, enacted the will of the people and took back control of immigration in the exact manner they promised to.
Net migration went from 100's of thousands to millions, why would we not blame them and blame someone else?
"Migration could get to net-zero in 2026" is what the current government are getting blamed for.
This will lead to Reform and then to Reform Pro Max with extra ICE, which should then combat that issue.
Just curious where you are seeing this? Illegal immigration figures are down under the current government