What I experienced last year was many digital verification steps that were all required for my UK right-to-work: open a UK bank account, sign up for a UK phone number, secure a UK residential postal address, apply for UK right-to-rent codes, generate a UK national insurance number, file for UK healthcare registration, and more.
Each step had different digital workflows and UI/UX. To traverse all these steps took hundreds of hours and a couple months wall time.
Many steps had catch-22s, such as the UK bank account requiring a UK phone number, and the UK phone company requiring a UK bank account. None of the steps had a quick simple way to digitally verify my UK work visa or my US passport.
IMHO federation could be a big help here, such as for government agencies and government-approved businesses doing opt-in data sharing and ideally via APIs. For example, imagine each step can share its relevant information with other steps. This could make things more efficient, more accurate, and ideally more secure.
I am not sure a government digital ID would help with dealing with businesses.
Right to rent is a stupid and useless bit of bureaucracy which encourages racism - its much easier for landlords not to rent to someone who looks or sounds foreign, especially at the bottom end of the market where people might not have passports.
Edit: I should have said something like discrimination on grounds of race or national origin. The landlords are not motivated by a desire to discriminate, but to avoid have to carry out checks, especially if they do not understand the requirements with regard to visas - easier just to let to someone who (they think!) is definitely British.
Where I live e-government is super smooth, like having your taxes filed for you - all you have to do is to sign it with your e-id. E-id is, as I see it, actually saftey for me as a citizen, with delegated security so that the SP only get verification and the info actually needed from the IDP.
Although requiring it for porn is just sick.
What I have a problem with is just how fragmented and broken the UK immigration system is when you have the misfortune of coming into contact with it. It's (like many such large systems worldwide) a set of policies and rules that have accumulated over time into something that is pathologically poorly thought out. I'm going through the process of renewing my spouse's visa (I'm British), and it's fractally awful -- we've just had a snarky email from our landlord who is worried that the right-to-rent permission is expiring, but it's not possible to apply for a renewal for the visa prior to 28 days before expiry of her current visa. I meet all the criteria to sponsor my spouse for renewal, but the evidentiary burden is insane (I've collected 400+ pages of documents so far). Nobody wants this. It is very expensive and difficult (probably >£10k per person until permanent residency in fees, not including legal expenses) to be compliant even if you meet the criteria, which just leads people falling out of status (to borrow an American term). The government (of all stripes) tries to be "tough" but the only lever it knows how to pull is to make the rules stricter, not making them better enforced or align with some meaningful policy agenda.
This farcical situation extends into the UK's broken citizenship model where there are 6 different types of nationality, none of which give any rights you can't build through a hodgepodge of other different statuses. As far as I know the UK is the only country in the world that permits dual nationality with itself!
A government online account which can generate verifiable credentials would probably be helpful in a broad sense but it wouldn't cure bad policy which is rampant in the UK immigration sector. I'd much rather have some kind of digital ID that's clear and authoritative rather than just hoping that Experian has my details right with no recourse if they're wrong.
There is one right. If you are British at birth they can't strip your citizenship and kick you out. Everyone else's residence is at the whim of the Home Secretary.
Not true. If you have dual nationality at birth, typically because you have one British parent and are born in the UK, then you are British at birth but the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citizenship anyway.
So, paradoxically, a child born in the UK to a British mother can end up with stronger UK citizenship rights if the mother doesn't reveal who the father is.
That's not as bad as if you are a naturalized British citizen. In that case, the Home Secretary has the power to strip you of British citzenship and leave you entirely stateless (you have no citizenship anywhere), which you can imagine is a very difficult status to live with.
British born, stripped of citizenship
I’m not commenting on the rightness or not of her case, just pointing out that being born British is not necessarily the guarantee you are describing
This is quite a recent change in the law. Prior to 2014 they could only strip citizenship if you applied and received it without having a right to it (e.g. if you were born abroad to non-British parents). After 2014 naturalised citizens (like Begum) were also liable.
I do think it is a bad law and she is being treated disgracefully. There's still hope the ECHR will sort it.
How does one apply for this?
It’s also possible for e.g. a BNO to register for British citizenship after a period of residence in the UK. This does not extinguish the original nationality. Most hong kongers with British citizenship are in this bucket.
Because by requiring children, but not adults, to have digital ID as part of a much larger (and pretty terrible) law that is already close to being passed and disguising it as a safeguarding measure they are sneaking it in for some people AND getting the next generation used to it.
> Digital ID is not bad;
The opposition to digital ID is largely coming from people who do think Digital ID is bad.
"... Labour MPs are growing increasingly frustrated with the government's U-turns.
Some had already been wary of defending controversial government policies to their constituents because they feared that the policy would inevitably be reversed."
which implies that the MPs are openly admitting that they don't state their personal opinions, merely parrot the party line, but are frustrated when they are required to abruptly change the things they claim to believe in.
What a farce. Members of parliament should have their OWN fucking views about things, and defend or debate those views on behalf of the people they represent.
Many of these people would not be in Parliament if they weren't selected by the party. Most people vote for a party, not the MP. So why would it benefit the MP to have their own views when they can just parrot whatever they've been told to? It doesn't.
For whatever reason, Tony Blair's think tank is obsessed with this idea[1]. As I understand he still has a lot of influence over British politics.
[1] https://institute.global/digital-id-what-is-it-and-how-it-wo...
Probably considers it as unfinished business from his administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Cards_Act_2006
> existing checks, using documents such as biometric passports, will move fully online by 2029.
Well I guess that's good at least. I imagine they'll just assign people "digital passports" at some point and you just pay to get a paper copy.
So I'm not surprised to see this trashed.
Could you say a bit more about this? I didn't find it in their manifesto from the last election. Is it a new policy? Do you know which minister is responsible?
I'm sure things have gotten better, but I'll never forget how backwards it all seemed coming from puny Belgium.
While the UK might not have been the first, there was a big push to move government services online over the 2000s. I think this may have been easier than in other countries since so many services were run by post rather than requiring you to go to a particular government office.
Opening a bank account became much more difficult in the early 2000s because of the money laundering/terrorism financing legislation. It became a real pain for international students when I worked in a student union back then.
The liberal resistance to ID cards in Britain was more reasonable before it became required to prove your identity so often. Not having an ID card has become a bit of a pain now, especially for elderly people who may not have a driving licence or current passport.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fascinating-facts-about-s...
Payslips are fully automated and there is a nice HMRC app that lets you see your PAYE income. Also, the NHS app is not half bad, you can mostly access any previous information but its not always fully populated due to a mixed bag of records
Memorising your Birthday to be 2 years earlier to fool the pub bouncer was what we all did.
> Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify ... thus it is known as an uncodified constitution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...
When your constitution is ad hoc, it seems only fair that everything else is. Start with the foundation before formalising everything else.