Shortly after King Charles III formally invites Andy Burnham to form a government on Monday, the incoming Labour Prime Minister will scrap the UK’s proposed digital ID scheme, ending one of the more controversial policies of outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

The decision, announced by Burnham’s office, does not end the government’s wider digital transformation programme. Instead, it abandons the proposal for a universal government-backed identity credential while retaining separate digital public services.

The digital ID scheme, first announced last September, would have required all UK residents to hold a digital identity — dubbed “BritCard” — initially framed as mandatory for right-to-work checks.

It faced sustained opposition from the start. A parliamentary petition against it gathered almost three million signatures, one of the largest in British history, prompting the government to drop the mandatory element in January in favour of a voluntary system.

That compromise failed to end the row. Critics warned that the scheme threatened to expand beyond immigration checks into areas such as healthcare, banking and travel, while supporters argued it would modernise public services and reduce fraud.

Over the weekend, Burnham’s office said the estimated $2.4bn (1.8bn pounds) planned expenditure for the scheme over the next three years — around $807m (600m pounds) annually — would instead be redirected towards priorities such as “helping with the cost of living”.

The decision carries a pointed irony. Burnham was the Home Office minister responsible for much of the early implementation of previous Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s original ID card scheme in 2006, before it too was scrapped in 2010. That had been criticised for projected lifetime costs running into several billion pounds.

Campaigners declare victory — but say the fight isn’t over

For Elizabeth Anderson, chief executive of the Digital Poverty Alliance, a British charity, the scheme’s collapse is welcome news, but for reasons distinct from the civil liberties concerns that dominated much of the debate.

She said the proposal raised serious questions for the estimated 19 million British adults who are digitally excluded through lack of device access, connectivity or skills. Research by her organisation has found that one in five adults can only use online government services with someone else’s help. She added that the government’s proposed remedy — directing people to libraries and post offices for support — was “impractical if people needed to use this at home, on the move, or outside opening hours”.

Anderson argued the scheme’s broader unpopularity reflected long-standing trust issues around how government holds and processes personal data, compounded by “the changing nature of the announcement and the lack of a clear and compelling case for how it would help the person on the street.”

That combination, she said, left Britons already disengaged from online services — often the most vulnerable — concerned about what a digital ID would mean for them.

Not everyone in the digital inclusion sector viewed the scheme as straightforwardly harmful, Anderson acknowledged. Some organisations had hoped it would “shine a spotlight on digital inclusion needs” and unlock new funding.

But she was doubtful that money saved from scrapping the programme will reach the people who need it most. What Britain needs, she said, was sustained, long-term local investment: a dedicated digital inclusion lead in every local authority, funding for community charities, teacher training to build young people’s digital confidence and provision of keyboard devices for every child as education moves online.

Civil liberties campaigners have also claimed the decision as a win, though with a caveat. Alan Miller, co-founder of the campaign group Together, said in a statement that the announcement was welcome but that “our work is not done”, citing other online government systems that he said could evolve into a “de facto digital ID through creeping expansion”.

Supporters call it a missed opportunity

Not everyone has welcomed the British government’s reversal.

The Tony Blair Institute, which has consistently backed digital ID, previously described the policy as “long overdue” and warned against it becoming “another failed government IT project” through poor delivery, in comments from its director of government innovation, Alexander Iosad.

Labour Together, the think tank whose 2025 white paper report laid out much of the groundwork for the BritCard proposal, has argued that a national digital identity could end “identity exclusion” for people with uncertain immigration status and help prevent a repeat of the Windrush scandal. (Al Jazeera)

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