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...

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.

You know the UK desperately needs to spend billions on a never ending software project with some awful agencies building the impossible.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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 right-to-work process has many digital ID aspects already in place-- but it turns out they're not coordinated into a whole.

What I experienced last year was many digital verification steps: a bank deposit account, a local phone number on file, a residential postal address, right-to-rent proof, national insurance number, healthcare registration, passport verification, etc. Each aspect was independent, with totally different tech and UX and workflows. This took a couple months to traverse.

My opinion is phasing in federation could be a big help. For example, imagine each step can share its relevant information with other steps, as the person traverses the process. This could make things more efficient, more accurate, and ideally more secure as well.