Amnon Cohen, Camden and Haringey Socialist Party
On 26 September, Sir Keir Starmer announced plans for the “Brit card”, a new, mandatory digital ID card for all workers in the UK. 24 hours later, over a million had signed an online petition in opposition.
ID cards have long been policy of the Blairite Labour Party. Tony Blair’s government introduced the Identity Cards Act 2006, which was later overturned. Then, it was touted as a necessary measure against terrorism. Now, keen to compete with the anti-immigrant rhetoric of Reform, Starmer has rebranded this new iteration of the policy as a measure to stop illegal immigrants from working in the UK.
But current legislation already requires employers to verify proof of their employees’ rights to work. Failure to do this can result in a civil penalty of up to £45,000 for a first breach and up to £60,000 for repeat breaches per illegal worker. And if the employer knowingly employs someone who does not have the right to work, they can face criminal prosecution, up to five years in prison and an unlimited fine. The Brit Card will do nothing to stop bosses super-exploiting migrant workers, and that being used to drive down pay and conditions.
Starmer’s proposed Brit Card will initially “only” be used to verify its holders’ right to work, and control access to government and health services. This will mean that all government, health and financial records for an individual will be linked by their ID number.
This itself is a significant threat to civil liberty and privacy, meaning a ‘Big Brother’ state, where the authorities have the technical ability to monitor all aspects of people’s lives. A centralised database containing a vast amount of personal and sensitive data (identity, health, financial history) becomes an extremely high-value target for cybercriminals and hackers.
Blair’s attempt
When the Blair government tried to impose ID cards in 2006, its legislation contained penalties of up to £1,000 for failure to notify authorities of change of address or of a stolen card, and up to two years imprisonment for using a card belonging to someone else. In Germany, failure to present an ID card can result in a €5,000 fine, in Israel it could result in a six-months imprisonment.
The Brit Card will be a digital card, which will require the installation of a government-issued gov.uk wallet app on every phone. Who will audit the code of the app? What is in place to prevent the state or other private entities following the lead of other states and using it for surveillance purposes?
The British government has a history of colossal and expensive IT failures with involvement from the private sector. The Post Office Horizon scandal, the failed NHS computerisation project The National Programme for IT (NPfIT), Test and Trace, Birmingham City Council’s failed IT modernisation scheme…
There is a long list of victims of data loss and hacking, including ransomware attacks on the NHS and businesses, such as the recent high-profile M&S ransomware attack and Jaguar Land Rover (see opposite).
There is no evidence to suggest that the Brit Card database and apps will be immune to these kinds of bugs and hacking exploits. Bugs and outages could lead to people being denied employment, access to services or evicted.
The Tony Blair Institute has claimed that the card will cost £1 billion with £100 million per year running costs. It is highly likely to cost much more, some estimates put the projected cost of Blair’s 2006 scheme at over £10 billion before it was ditched, for example.
Why can the government afford this, when it says it can’t afford to restore all pensioners’ winter fuel allowance, or scrap the two-child benefit cap?
Blair’s increasingly unpopular Labour government couldn’t get its ID card scheme established. Starmer’s Labour government is already far more unpopular and weak. To millions of workers it is clear that it acts in the interests of the profiteering bosses by pushing through further austerity. Starmer’s Brit Card would be used as a tool for use against the workers’ movement and its struggles to defend itself against increasing attacks by the government and employers. That is why it should be opposed.
