What’s next for the UK now that mandatory digital ID isn’t happening?
Jaye Hackett
On 13 Jan, the government dropped the “mandatory” part of their digital right to work check plans.
As far as we can tell, the scheme would have given every working person in the UK a new digital credential, which they would need to present when starting a new job.
It would have replaced the currently allowed ways to do the check, either with a UK or Irish passport, or with an eVisa share code.
There would have been many ways to get the credential, from using an existing government photo ID through to loosely-described “casework”.
Right to work was the worst possible place to start. It was heavily politicised and struggled to find a genuine use case. The current eVisa system works fine for the government’s purposes. The security cannot be faulted because every check is auditable and goes direct to the source.
There are still ergonomic issues when validating a large number of new employees, because unless you’re using a platform like Vouchsafe, every eVisa share code must be typed into GOV.UK one by one. However this wasn’t the focus of the government’s argument.
It’s not clear whether the government still intends to create an entirely new non-mandatory credential that will be another way to do a right to work check, or just double down on digitising the existing ones; passports, visas and driving licences.
Our take: this is the best possible news for digital ID in the UK; a return to a much saner plan that’s already in progress, and may in fact accelerate adoption.
This scheme was supposed to come into force by 2029. That’s a lifetime away in digital identity terms.
For comparison, GOV.UK One Login is intended to be fully adopted by all central government services by the end of 2027. That means no matter what part of government you’re interacting with, you will only have to prove who you are once.
One Login is already building most of the technology today that the planned right-to-work scheme would have used, and continues to do so.
Even sooner, mobile driving licences are currently being rolled out on a small scale, and are expected to be publicly available later in 2026.
Forty million Britons have a driving licence. If the public roll-out happens as planned, by next January next Jan that’s a majority of us with a high-assurance digital ID within easy reach.
That will be nothing less than transformative for the economy; crushing today’s “give us a picture of your passport and utility bill” thinking and wiping out a whole class of identity fraud at the same time.
Essentially, this U-turn is everything we needed: less toxic politics, more focus on the real use cases by which the technology can benefit individuals and businesses.
2026 is going to be a hell of a year.
Confused about digital ID? You’re not alone. Cut through the noise at our next panel event on 5 Feb in London. At the time of writing, less than ten spots remain. Apply to attend here.
