PM to set out plans for digital ID cards

All working adults will need digital ID cards under plans to be announced by Keir Starmer today, in a move that will spark a battle with civil liberties campaigners.

- Rowena Mason, Robert Booth

The prime minister will set out the plans at a conference on how progressive politicians can tackle the country’s problems, including addressing immigration concerns.

The proposals for a “Brit card” would require legislation and are already facing opposition from privacy campaigners. However, No 10 is understood to believe that it is necessary to make sure people have the right to work in the UK in order to tackle illegal migration, and that the national mood has moved on since Tony Blair’s plans for ID cards were abandoned in the 2000s.

Shabana Mahmood, the new home secretary, backs the plans, having said her “long-term personal political view has always been in favour of ID cards”.

Starmer said this month that digital IDs could "play an important part" in making Britain less attractive to illegal migrants and France has repeatedly claimed that the lack of official cards acts as a "pull factor".

In advance of his speech today, Starmer spoke about the government's goal of "patriotic renewal", comparing it with "the politics of grievance, of toxic divide, which is what Reform are all about". He dismissed the Conservative party as "basically dead".

He will set out his view today that the far right is injecting a "poisonous" discourse into national life, saying: "At its heart its most poisonous belief on full display at the protests here in London, just a week or two ago, that there is a coming struggle, a defining struggle, a violent struggle, for the nation. For all our nations.