Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 6
8th Report - Mandatory to manageable: the government’s plans for digital ID
Published 20 May 2026
Addressed to Home Office
Home Affairs Committee Harnessing the potential of new digital forms of identification All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
Digital right to work checks offer some benefits to employers, but mandating digital right to work checks would mean a very significant shift in the way that employers are required to carry out right to work checks. It is vital that this change is not just treated as an afterthought to digital ID, but as a significant policy change in its own right. In particular, the implication that it may become mandatory for UK citizens who wish to work in the UK to hold a passport or a digital ID has not been highlighted by the government and is not asked about specifically in its consultation. (Conclusion, Paragraph 36)
From: Home Affairs Committee, 8th Report - Mandatory to manageable: the government’s plans for digital ID (HC 986), 20 May 2026
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 18 September 2026 (deadline 20 July 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it has cancelled the national Digital ID programme the Committee examined, and will not proceed with it, but will take the Committee's findings into account "where relevant" in its other digital identity work.
- On digital right to work checks, the government says it "will not move to require all right to work checks, carried out by employers, to be conducted digitally".
- From 1 October 2026, an employer who chooses to use a digital verification service for a prescribed digital right to work check will need to use a certified service on the statutory register to obtain a statutory excuse. This "does not require an employer to choose the digital route".
- On intelligence sharing, the government agrees that intelligence from right to work checks should support enforcement "where it can be shared lawfully and securely", and says the Home Office "will continue to work with" OfDIA and providers to "consider" how it can be reported and acted upon.
- On eVisas, the government says the system will continue, and the proposal to transfer eVisas into the national programme "no longer arises" because that programme has been cancelled.