You could soon need to show a card on an app to get a job or rent a house under a proposed universal digital identity scheme.
A ‘BritCard’ would be a free, mandatory electronic credential stored on a person’s smartphone on the planned GOV.UK Wallet app.
Employers, immigration, banks and landlords could use a verifier app to conduct checks.
The card was proposed today in a policy paper by Labour Together handed to Number 10, with a poll conducted by the influential think-tank finding 80% of Britons would support a digital identity card.
The government are examining the proposals, which Labour Together said would also help reduce visa overstayers and benefit fraud.
Mockups show that the document would show whether the holder has the right to work or rent. Their driving licence would also be on the app, with hopes that the app could be used to order a passport, access NHS services or display your National Insurance number.
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People would be required to show their online ID when renting a property or applying for a new job, as a system would check their official records.
Landlords rarely face fines for not checking tenants’ migration status, Labour Together said, while employers face complex right-to-work rules that vary drastically between groups of people.
The paper also said it could help curb visa overstayers, with 63,000 non-EU nationals recorded as not leaving the country before their documents expired in the four years to March 2020, or fewer than 4%.
Britain is the only country in Europe without an ID card, with those in the EU able to travel around the bloc with one instead of a passport.
Sir Tony Blair attempted to introduce compulsory ID cards in 2006 after the September 11 and 7/7 bombings, only for it to be scrapped.
Labour Together estimated it would cost £400million to build the e-ID system and £10million to run the free-to-use phone app.
In the foreword, ‘red wall’ MPs Jake Richards and Adam Jogee said the BritCard ‘should form an important part of Labour’s enforcement strategy that does not compromise our principles and values’.
They added: ‘The Windrush scandal saw thousands of people wrongly targeted by immigration enforcement, including many legitimate British citizens who were unjustly detained or deported.
‘We believe that a progressive government does not have to choose between dealing with these injustices. It must tackle them all head-on.’
Morgan Wild, Labour Together’s chief policy adviser, said: ‘The state makes everyone, whether they are a British citizen or not, prove their right to work or rent.
‘But we don’t give everyone with the right to be here the ability to prove it.
‘That leads to discrimination, unjust deportation and, as happened in the worst Windrush cases, dying in a country that is not your own. Through a national effort to provide everyone with proof of their right to be here, BritCard can stop that from ever happening again.’
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