I welcome the government’s revisions to the digital ID policy. Mandatory ID was an overstep too far.
When the Prime Minister led Labour into government, he was clear in his first speech on Downing Street: this Labour government would tread lightly on people’s lives, and we would be a government of service.
We can use technology to make public services work better. Anyone who has used government digital systems knows just how disconnected they can be. Improving government so it works for working people is being a government of service. But we can do this without overreach and without undermining personal freedoms.
I am concerned about the gradual creep of government involvement, which risks intrusion rather than empowerment. There is almost always a standalone case that can be made for individual policies, but the cumulative impact must be checked.
There is a case for checking the bank accounts of welfare claimants to tackle fraud. There were arguments made by the previous government for requiring online platforms to collect and report National Insurance numbers for sellers, to ensure tax compliance. There are also arguments for the use of facial recognition to catch offenders. There is an argument for digital ID too.
But taken together, these measures risk a steady expansion of state reach into people’s lives unless clear limits are set.
It is this need to keep the role of the state in check that partly informs my opposition to the Assisted Dying Bill. I believe it changes the role of the state too far.
Making digital ID voluntary, not mandatory, is the right call. People should have choice and confidence in how they prove who they are, not feel that something is being imposed on them.
And on treading lightly which was an important and foundational principle that means good and effective government that people barely notice, because it simply works well and causes as little frustration and intrusion as possible.
That balance matters, and I’ll always back policies that respect it.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 