Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 7
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 ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The government should ensure that its plans for the transition to digital right to work checks reflect the significance of this policy change for both businesses and individuals. In particular, we recommend that the government takes steps to engage the general public on the specific question of what identity documents will in future be required to work in the UK, and whether government support is needed to increase the accessibility of those documents. The government should also work with businesses to ensure that effective guidance is available about how digital right to work checks should be carried out and what responsibilities employers will have. (Recommendation, Paragraph 37)
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.