No2ID

Child Benefit checks as the Cathedral-like Vision of “a New State” The HMRC Child Benefit debacle – first spotted in Northern Ireland, with tens of thousands of families across the UK being treated as fraudsters and denied money they are eligible for, based on dee…

HMRC’s mess with the HO data are an example of plans to “shut down the legacy state” www.no2id.uk/2025/child-b...

HMRC trial of child benefit crackdown wrongly suspected fraud in 46% of cases Exclusive: Almost half of families flagged as emigrants based on Home Office travel data were still living in UK

UK government project using AI to find benefit fraud resulted in:

- A 46% false fraud rate
- Anguish for families who were wrongly accused of fraud and had benefits stopped
- Months of additional work for government, setting up a hotline, correcting false fraud

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Government ‘considering physical alternatives’ for those unable access digital ID Ministers reveal that the digitally excluded may be able to use familiar locations on the high street to obtain a more traditional ID card that could be kept in wallets Government is exploring ...

Josh Simons, the junior minister responsible for digital ID (and former Labour Together director) has promised govt will embark on “the largest ever digital inclusion programme ever delivered in this country" to deliver digital ID. www.publictechnology.net/2025/11/05/s...

The upcoming ID Cards Consultation In the announcement of ‘digital ID cards’ that they claimed would prevent illegal migration, the Government also announced a consultation to cover a range of other topics, including the age range a…

The upcoming ID Cards consultation www.no2id.uk/2025/upcomin...

Labour must ‘shut down legacy state’ in drive for digital ID, says minister Darren Jones told Cabinet colleagues on Tuesday that digital ID would make people’s experience of a new state ‘fundamentally much better’.

It is almost impossible to have a coherent response to govt's plans for digital ID because it keeps changing its mind about what it's for. With Darren Jones at the helm, the new plan is to use it to "shut down the legacy state" www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

This story gets more ridiculous by the day

But now we know airlines are giving passenger data to the Home Office, who are passing information about travel* to HMRC, who then use it to make decisions about stopping benefits

(*or, in this case, not travel)

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

UK woman who booked Oslo flight but did not fly loses child benefit ‘because she emigrated’ Exclusive: HMRC told Lisa Morris-Almond there was no record of her return to UK, but she did not take the trip

Today in the Database State www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Consultation summary from ID cards 1.0

Oh, hi

Responding to the Government’s response to the ID Cards petition Government replied to the petition commencing: We will introduce a digital ID within this Parliament to help tackle illegal migration, make accessing government services easier, and enable wider ef…

Reading the Blair Government’s argument for ID - section by section

www.no2id.uk/2025/respond...

‘Clear parallels’ with Windrush as UK-born toddler denied passport Campaigners say lessons not being learned as three-year-old’s mother is asked to prove right to free NHS treatment

An irregular reminder that part of the UK government's digital ID plans is to put an "authoritative proof" of everyone's residency status in a smartphone IDwalletthingy by next election (so mid-2029...)

Complicated cases, like this, are gonna need a lot of care

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Petition: Do not introduce Digital ID cards We demand that the UK Government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID cards. There are reports that this is being looked at.

The government has responded to the petition “Do not introduce Digital ID cards”, which currently has 2,755,731 signatures: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

On Friday my phone blew up with messages about BritCard.

I don’t think it’s a tech test. It’s a trust test.

2m+ signatures against already. If trust isn’t designed in from day one, BritCard risks repeating the same failures that killed past ID schemes.

My take medium.com/writing-by-i...

A warning message within the One Login app — stating that everything will be deleted from the app if the user logs out from one of their One Login accounts in order to log in in again with another one, breaking the government's own identity assurance principles.

GOV.UK One Login is a mess. Alongside reported security issues & missing features like delegation & support for business, it breaks the government’s identity assurance principles: it's impossible to switch easily between different One Login accounts. How did it ever pass a service assessment?

This is very good from @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social

Of note “Greater efficiency in public services [from Digital ID] did not come out in the research as a high priority for the general public, who instead want to see other improvements in their daily lives.”

History shows that when democracies face crises, strengthening and reinvigorating democratic participation is essential to prevent democratic backsliding and the rise of authoritarianism. This is not that.

Will people arrested at a protest for human rights action on Palestine have to unlock their phones to show their ID to the police?
bsky.app/profile/arts...

I'm seeing so many takes around parts of the "ID card" melange, I have to add a few.

It's not about cards. It's about registers. A register is a definitive 'true source' of data, about people, places, buildings, whatever.