Training: BCS Practitioner Certificate in Data Protection Prime Minister Andy Burnham has scrapped plans for a government-issued digital ID for all British adults, dropping the scheme entirely in the first major policy decision of his premiership and redirecting the resources earmarked for it towards cost of living measures.
Burnham's spokesperson said the "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", adding that the "reprioritisation of public resource shows a change in direction towards improving everyday life and strengthening local economies over expensive national government schemes".
The decision does not, however, unwind the statutory framework for digital identity. The digital verification services provisions of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, including the trust framework and register for certified providers, remain in force, and the Government has confirmed that mandatory digital right-to-work checks will continue despite the wider scheme being abandoned.
Responsibility for digital identity policy has meanwhile transferred to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport as part of this week's machinery of government changes, which also abolished the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The scheme was announced by Sir Keir Starmer ahead of Labour's conference last year, with mandatory digital ID for workers presented as a means of clamping down on illegal working and allowing citizens to prove identity for key services without hunting for utility bills. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated last November that the programme would cost £1.8bn over three years, a figure Downing Street rejected without providing its own. In January, after nearly three million people signed a parliamentary petition opposing digital IDs, ministers ditched the compulsory element and relaunched the scheme as voluntary.
Dame Karen Bradley, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, subsequently concluded that the government had been right to introduce digital ID but had botched the launch, describing attempts to set out the plans as "nothing short of a fiasco" which "raised fears of government over-reach into people's lives".
Deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that the money saved was "not an insignificant amount" and would be reprioritised, but added: "It's not just about the money, it's actually about the attention and the focus, so that the whole of government machinery can work in service of the agenda and the vision that the Labour government is setting out under Andy Burnham."
Jack Coulson, head of advocacy at campaign group Big Brother Watch, said the British people had been "clear that they do not want mandatory ID", but cautioned that the dangers of a "papers please" society had not gone away, pointing to concerns that the Government's approach to social media age restrictions could produce a de facto identification requirement for internet access.
Burnham was the Home Office minister responsible for much of the early implementation of Tony Blair's identity card scheme in 2006, before that programme was itself scrapped in 2010.
The machinery of government statement transferring digital identity policy to DCMS is available here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2026-07-21/hlws298
