Select committee: Home Affairs Committee
Conclusion 15
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)
The government’s initial announcement of digital ID was rushed, poorly thought through, and failed to articulate convincingly any of the potential benefits. This undermined existing public support for the introduction of digital ID. The government has since taken positive steps to improve its policy including abandoning the commitment to make digital ID mandatory, improving engagement with the digital verification services sector, and publishing a detailed consultation with a People’s Panel. However, the fact that these steps were all taken after the initial announcement of mandatory digital ID shows how back-to-front the development of this policy has been. The government has already learnt some lessons from the handling of this programme so far, including the need for greater sensitivity to the views of the public. However, there is still a long way to go to undo the damage of the initial announcement, and the government is yet to demonstrate that it has the capacity to implement a complicated programme of this nature. To ensure the credibility of the programme it is essential that it is subject to much more robust cross-government consultation across the UK, as well as more detailed policy development and public engagement. (Conclusion, Paragraph 63) 30
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.