Digital ID Won't Work Without Public Trust, Warns Information Commissioner
3 min read
The government's digital ID scheme will not work without public trust, the information commissioner has told MPs.
"You can legislate all you want, but these systems won't work unless people trust them," John Edwards told the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee on Tuesday morning.
"And people won't trust them unless they can be reassured that an office like mine has been overseeing the development and has been provided."
Edwards, who has served as head of the Information Commissioner's Office since the beginning of 2022, sought to reassure the committee that he expects the public body to work with ministers to "influence" the government's development of mandatory digital ID "in ways that maximise the public's trust".
He also suggested that digital ID could be a beneficial policy, telling MPs it is important not to "get in the way of innovation" and that there are "enormous efficiencies to be made in government by better use of data".
In September, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that the government would bring in mandatory digital ID before the next general election. Ministers argue that it will improve public interaction with public services and help tackle illegal migration.
However, while many Labour MPs support the policy, some have criticised the government for not doing enough to sell the plan to voters.
PoliticsHome previously reported concern among Labour MPs that the government was doing little to combat the spread of conspiracy theories and fake claims about the plans online.
Tech Secretary Liz Kendall recently told MPs there is "a lot of misinformation" and "scaremongering" being spread about the government's plans.
The BBC was forced to apologise this month after its comedy show Have I Got News For You repeated the false claim that a company owned by Euan Blair, son of former prime minister Tony, had been awarded a government contract to develop digital ID. The BBC edited the episode to remove the claim after it was spotted by PoliticsHome.
Speaking to MPs on Tuesday, Edwards said that the ICO is the proxy for the public and would share any reservations around digital ID with the government, and insisted that ministers would take those concerns seriously.
Edwards said it would be for Parliament to determine the legitimacy of the policy objective and then a matter for the ICO to "identify ways in which those objectives can be achieved consistently with data protection and privacy values".
Liberal Democrat MP Martin Wrigley, who is a member of the committee, expressed concerns about how the formation of the scheme could lead to artificial intelligence hallucinations or breaches of data protection.
Labour MP Emily Darlington said that Wrigley was putting forward a dystopian scenario, to which Edwards responded: "You look at the dystopian and work out how that is prevented."
Edwards said that the ICO would ensure that "the design principles include data protection principles, for example, data minimisation, purpose limitation, data protection, and impact assessment".
He later added: "There's a lot of water to go under the bridge, but you can be assured that the ICO will be there informing those choices to avoid the kind of dystopian outcome that you're rightly concerned about."
