The United Kingdom’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham is scrapping the widely unpopular plans for a government-issued digital ID to free up funds for more pressing concerns, such as addressing the U.K.’s cost-of-living crisis.
On July 19, the U.K.’s new PM—in office as of July 20—announced his intention to ditch plans for a digital ID for U.K. citizens, proposed by the government of his predecessor, Keir Starmer.
The widely unpopular plans had already been scaled back by the previous government in January, when a mandate requiring workers to sign up to the ID was dropped.
Doomed ID plan
The U.K. government has been exploring the creation of a digital ID—sometimes referred to as the ‘BritCard’—for some time, with efforts picking up pace when former PM Starmer announced in September 2025 plans to make it mandatory to prove right to work.
“This government will make a new, free-of-charge digital ID mandatory for the right to work by the end of this parliament,” said Starmer. “Let me spell that out. You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”
This met with a hostile response from politicians across the spectrum (including in his own ruling Labour Party), liberty advocacy groups, such as Big Brother Watch, Open Rights Group, and Liberty Human Rights, and a large, vocal section of the historically ID-reticent U.K. public.
A petition on the government website titled “Do not introduce Digital ID cards” garnered 850,000 signatures within a few days of the announcement and closed with over 2.9 million signatures in January.
This backlash was more than the already unpopular Starmer was willing to take, leading to an embarrassing row back. Plans for the digital ID were not dropped entirely, instead it was re-pitched as a voluntary tool to make access to public services easier and quicker, rather than mandatory.
However, Starmer’s popularity continued its downward spiral—based on a range of perceived personal and political failings—and, with the former Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, returning to parliament after his emphatic June 18 win in the Makerfield parliamentary by-election, the PM was forced to resign on June 20.
“King of the North” Burnham was subsequently crowned the new Labour leader, took office on Monday, and immediately began laying out his vision for the country—one that appears notably distinct from that of the previous Labour government.
Digital ID not a priority
Burnham was one of the more prominent skeptics of his predecessor’s mandatory worker ID plan, saying at the time that: “I think there’s a risk of an opportunity cost situation here, where something can consume a huge amount of time and actually doesn’t come through. And that will be the lesson about [the ID card plans in the] 2005 to 2010 parliament, it consumed a lot of air time and it didn’t actually materialise.”
This is in reference to a previous failed attempt by the U.K. to introduce an ID card almost two decades ago, with the Identity Cards Act 2006, a scheme that allowed the creation of physical National Identity Cards, which were issued to British citizens on a voluntary basis.
Only around 15,000 National Identity Cards were ever issued—in a country of around 67 million people—and the Act was repealed in 2011, due to concerns about cost, effectiveness, discrimination, human rights, and ‘the surveillance state.’ By the time the Identity Card Bill was repealed, the Home Office stated that £257 million ($346 million) had been spent—or rather wasted—on implementing the failed ID cards.
Therefore, with his unopposed coronation as new PM, one of Burnham’s first proclamations (before he even took office) was to put an end to the latest attempt at an ID scheme—this time in digital form—even in its voluntary form.
According to a July 18 BBC report, Burnham’s office said the move was due to a shift in the daily priorities facing people across the country.
“Time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it’s most needed, such as helping with the cost of living,” a spokesperson reportedly told the BBC.
Cost of living became an increasing concern in the U.K. from around 2021, as the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions, rising global energy prices, and subsequent geopolitical events caused the prices of everyday essentials, particularly energy and food, to rise much quicker than average incomes. U.K. consumer price inflation peaked at 11.1% in October 2022, the highest level in 41 years. Although inflation steadily declined thereafter and regular pay growth began to outpace inflation by mid-2023, many households continued to face financial pressure because prices remained substantially higher than before the crisis and continued to increase, albeit more slowly, into 2025.
This is one of the main challenges facing Burnham, as it was for the previous Labour government, particularly as the cost of living disproportionately affects those on lower incomes and those living in poverty, addressing poverty and inequality traditionally with a central priority of the Labour Party.
This was expressed by Burnham’s spokesperson, who reportedly said that the reprioritization of public resources away from digital IDs “shows a change in direction towards improving everyday life and strengthening local economies over expensive national government schemes.”
This shift in focus and monetary resources was the final nail in the coffin for the unpopular digital ID, seemingly putting a definitive end to the scheme for the foreseeable future.
Lessons to be learned
Burnham’s swift move to put the kibosh on Starmer’s controversial digital ID has already proven an easy PR win for the new PM.
“The British people were clear that they do not want mandatory ID,” said Jack Coulson, Head of Advocacy at Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties and privacy campaigning organization that was vehemently opposed to the scheme.
This sentiment was echoed by digital rights and freedoms advocacy organization Open Rights Group (ORG), which posted on X that: “The climbdown over mandatory Digital ID is a victory for ORG and other groups that warned of the threats to everyone’s civil liberties… Even if it’s voluntary, Digital ID still creates a surveillance infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, leading government think tank The Institute for Government (IfG) praised the new PM’s decisiveness, saying that “Burnham did well to make a quick decision and stop digital ID hanging around absorbing time and resources.”
However, it also cautioned the incoming government to reflect on why the policy was “so feebly rooted in the first place.”
According to IfG, the main problems with the policy were that: little account was taken of how to land the scheme with the public, with consultation patched on at the end rather than integral to preparing the public and addressing their concerns; it was developed in secret at the behest of a No.10 “seemingly desperate for a measure that would crack down on irregular migration”; it featured nowhere in the Labour manifesto, nor was it funded in the spending review; and it was initially framed as a mandatory scheme to enable right to work checks, but it was never explained why unregulated employers would be any more diligent checking digital ID than the analogue papers they are supposed to, but often fail to check now.
“The truth is that the poor policy process leading up to the Starmer announcement [of dropping the ‘mandatory’ requirement] meant his ID card plan was pretty much dead on arrival,” IfG said. It added that “team Burnham would do well to learn a lesson from the poor process around this piece of policy making.”
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