Mandatory digital ID risks pushing “unauthorised migrants further into the shadows”, the leaders of eight civil liberties groups have warned.
Big Brother Watch’s interim director Rebecca Vincent was among those warning that rolling out a compulsory identification system could be “uniquely harmful to privacy, equality and civil liberties”.
Her organisation has garnered more than 101,000 signatures on a petition, calling on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to reject proposals for a “BritCard”.
The Government is thought to be considering an ID system in a bid to curb illegal migration.
In their letter to Sir Keir, the leaders wrote: “Mandatory digital ID is highly unlikely to achieve the Government’s objective of tackling unauthorised immigration.
“The proposed schemes fundamentally misunderstand the ‘pull factors’ that drive migration to the UK and would do very little to tackle criminal people-smuggling gangs or employers and landlords who operate ‘off the books’.
“Instead, it would push unauthorised migrants further into the shadows, into more precarious work and unsafe housing.”
The leaders, who include Liberty director Akiko Hart, Article 19 executive director Quinn McKew, Connected by Data executive director Jeni Tennison and Runnymede Trust chief executive Shabna Begum, also warned that a move by the Government risked shifting “the balance of power towards the state with dangerous implications for our security, rights and freedoms”.
They also said: “A mandatory digital ID scheme could be implemented in a way that is uniquely harmful to privacy, equality and civil liberties.
“It would require the population to surrender vast amounts of personal data to be amassed into population-wide databases which could be amalgamated, searched and analysed to monitor, track and profile individuals.
“A database which joins up all of our Government-held records and logs our interactions with the state would be a treasure trove for hackers and malign actors, leaving us vulnerable to catastrophic data security breaches.”
Think tank Labour Together in a June report made the case for a “mandatory national digital identity that would be issued free of charge to all those with the right to live or work in the UK, whether they are British-born nationals or legal migrants”.
The Government, it argued, “has the opportunity to build a new piece of civic infrastructure, something that would become a familiar feature of daily life for everyone in the country” by rolling out a BritCard.
The ID would play a role in right-to-work and right-to-rent checks, supporting “better enforcement of migration rules”, it added.
Asked about mandatory digital ID at the time, Cabinet minister Steve Reed, who is now the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary, told Times Radio it was “absolutely something” that the Government was “looking at”.
At his party conference in Bournemouth this month, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said he would back a move “giving individuals power to access public services”.
He continued: “However, I fear that’s not what we’re doing.”
His party would need to “scrutinise” the detail of a mandatory ID card scheme, Sir Ed said, and added that “there are models that may answer our objections as liberals”.
