Stanisland Magazine

Opinion: The British Government is set to unveil digital ID systems to curb migration. This is what it could mean for youL

Last updated: 28th September 2025

Keir Starmer has had a busy week. Having recognised the State of Palestine, he is now reportedly set to launch a digital ID scheme. Why, you ask? To make the UK less attractive for migrants.

Now, there are a few issues with this. The first being that it is a legal obligation (as per the 1951 Refugee Convention) to accept asylum seekers, and the second is: who does this benefit? Don’t we already have an identification system? It’s called a passport, a document which can be verified against existing databases to ensure legitimacy.

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Hosting a digital identification service online is a delicate business. Not only does it risk being leaked or the database hacked, but storing this information in huge quantities increases the likelihood of fraud on a mass scale.

Public Backlash

It’s safe to say, the public is not happy about it. You only need to scour the internet to find out just how disgusted people are by the very idea. One Reddit user said:

“To curb illegal migration? How does it do that? Give them an electric shock? We all know this is part of the Blair Labour plan to control how you spend your own money and benefits.”

Others lamented the idea: “What is the obsession with tracking everyone’s movements and habits?”

However, some pushed back, conveying their own experiences:

“I have lived as an immigrant in multiple countries that have national ID card systems, several of which are far more nationalist and racist than the UK. It is just a boring fact of life there that nobody ever mentions.”

On X (formerly Twitter), another posted: “The government will promote it as ‘for your own good’ or ‘for your safety’ or ‘for your convenience’. But actually, it’s for their control, surveillance and greed.”

The Law

According to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), several hurdles could hinder government progress before launching such a project. The first is the minimisation of data: “Personal data shall be: (c) adequate, relevant and limited to what is necessary in relation to the purposes for which they are processed (‘data minimisation’)”. This means any data held in large quantities must have a justifiable cause — something a class-action lawsuit will quash easily.

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Another consideration is the purpose of its use: “Personal data shall be: (b) collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes”. If the intended use of digital identification is to track and process migration, then this will not apply to UK citizens.

But the main obstacle could be function creep. This refers to the specificity of data usage and whether its use can be legally justified: “You must not collect or retain personal data on the off-chance that it might be useful in the future”. Therefore, one could argue that hoarding data for a ‘just in case’ use is not legal nor reasonable.

Final Thoughts

We’ve been here before with the NHS system hacks — their defences were far from ideal. On top of that, we know how vulnerable some people are, especially the elderly. If you thought letters containing bank details were an easy target for fraudsters, what about a vault of data stored online, all in one place? Aladdin’s cave will become digital, and the genie is a hacker.