Andy Burnham’s ID card surprise is very unsurprising

When Keir Starmer unveiled his plan to introduce digital ID cards for mandatory right to work checks last September, there were many sceptical voices. One was the former mayor of Greater Manchester, who said days after the announcement at Labour conference: “I think there’s a risk of an opportunity cost situation here, where something can consume a huge amount of time and actually doesn’t come through. And that will be the lesson about [the ID card plans in the] 2005 to 2010 Parliament; it consumed a lot of air time and it didn’t actually materialize”  ¹⁶ Lloyd N, ‘Burnham opposes digital ID and defends economic agenda after Reeves’ swipe’, The Independent, 29 September 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/andy-burnham-greater-manchester-mayor-new-labour-rachel-reeves-b2835881.html .  

Burnham had experience – his first junior ministerial role at the Home Office in the 2000s had involved responsibility for bringing in ID Cards. Now he has unsurprisingly decided, having inherited plans that were rushed, confused, and uncosted, to kill the plans off again. In doing so, he has added to the growing list of times that government plans for ID have foundered.  

Starmer’s plans suffered from a botched policy process

The truth is that the poor policy process leading up to the Starmer announcement meant his ID card plan was pretty much dead on arrival. It was developed in secret at the behest of a No.10 seemingly desperate for a measure that would crack down on irregular migration. It featured nowhere in the Labour manifesto, nor was it funded in the spending review (why Andy Burnham won’t be able to redeploy any “savings”). It was initially framed as a mandatory scheme to enable right to work checks, but it was never explained why shadow economy employers would be any more diligent checking digital ID than the analogue papers they are supposed to check now. The proposal was landed at a political gathering, with little supporting policy analysis – but then did not even rate a mention in Keir Starmer’s speech to the conference days later.  

First Liz Kendall, Starmer’s secretary of state for science, innovation and tech, and then Darren Jones in the Cabinet Office tried to salvage the proposal, by suggesting this would be a voluntary scheme, designed to help people access public services more easily – with the mandatory element downplayed as something that might happen longer term. Responsibility was transferred from DSIT to the Cabinet Office – and they embarked on a process of public consultation with a people’s panel meeting over the summer. Those consultees may now feel that their time was rather wasted. Legislation was supposed to be being introduced in a “Digital Access to Services Bill”. That will now be dropped, we assume.  

There are many complicated questions still to answer

It is not clear how – or indeed whether – the announcement to kill off digital ID was communicated to the 60 or so people in the project team working on it. Hopefully they will soon have clarity on what comes next, and what will happen to the work they have carried out to date, primarily pulling together the consultation results and preparing the bill for Parliament.  

It is not surprising that Burnham decided to stop digital ID in its tracks. It was unclear how much it would cost – and how much it was already costing. The ambition to ‘join up’ public services, by linking data relating to a person collected by online services, was a complicated technical undertaking. This was unlikely to have the same effect as successful coordination or shared priorities between different public services, especially since it proposed to keep data within departments. In addition, the cost of robust privacy, cyber security and oversight was likely to be significant. The aim to make a digital- and app-only ID inclusive, while particularly important, would also have been costly.  

Digital ID was also a policy caught between three departments. The Cabinet Office held overall responsibility for the scheme, but DSIT was responsible for the design, build and delivery.  ¹⁷ Lloyd N, ‘Burnham opposes digital ID and defends economic agenda after Reeves’ swipe’, The Independent, 29 September 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/andy-burnham-greater-manchester-mayor-new-labour-rachel-reeves-b2835881.html  DSIT is responsible for OneLogin, the single login service that it is rolling out across government, and for the governance of the UK’s digital identity market. However, the Home Office was likely to become more involved, given its responsibility for immigration. It is not clear which department would have ended up with the overall – and ongoing – responsibility for (and cost of) managing the technology.

Given that technical work has not started yet – and presuming that OneLogin continues to roll out – Burnham has decided to stop digital ID before the point of no return. Presumably, GOV.UK Wallet will continue to be rolled out,  ¹⁸ ‘How GOV.UK Wallet will work’, GOV.UK, https://www.gov.uk/wallet  and right to work checks will still become digital,  ¹⁹ ‘How GOV.UK Wallet will work’, GOV.UK, https://www.gov.uk/wallet  but a government-issued digital ID will no longer be part of either. Instead, the private digital verification industry will continue working as it has done to date. It could be an opportunity for the government to engage more proactively with businesses and individuals about what digital right to work checks will mean for them, and see how that change is received by the public and by businesses.  ²⁰ House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, Mandatory to manageable: the government’s plans for digital ID (HC 986), House of Commons, 20 May 2026, https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmhaff/986/report.html#heading-2   

Digital ID provides a salutary lesson in how not to do policy making

Team Burnham would do well to learn a lesson from the poor process around this piece of policy making. The very secretive and rushed process meant that a lot of questions could not be answered. There was no budget and initially not much of a team for the work.  Ministerial leadership was not clear. Little account was taken of how to land the scheme with the public – consultation was patched on at the end rather than integral to preparing the public and understanding and addressing their concerns upfront. Prime ministerial enthusiasm appeared to wane as quickly as it had waxed.  

Burnham did well to make a quick decision and stop digital ID hanging around absorbing time and resources. But he should also reflect on why the policy was so feebly rooted in the first place.