Science, Innovation and Technology Committee
Oral evidence: Innovation showcase, HC 523
Tuesday 28 October 2025
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 28 October 2025.
Science, Innovation and Technology Committee members present: Dame Chi Onwurah (Chair); Emily Darlington; Dr Allison Gardner; Kit Malthouse; Dr Lauren Sullivan; Adam Thompson; Martin Wrigley; Daniel Zeichner.
Health and Social Care Committee member present: Joe Robertson.
Question 41
Witness
I: Emily Hyett, Group Product Manager, Yoti.
Witness: Emily Hyett.
Q41 Chair: Welcome to this morning’s innovation showcase. The Committee wants to understand how the UK supports innovators and what more can be done. To inform our work, we select an innovator to share their story before our main evidence session each week.
It is my pleasure to introduce today’s innovator. We have Emily Hyett from Yoti, a British tech company headquartered in the UK. Emily leads on strategic product innovation for them, so she helps to develop technology which allows people to prove their age, or who they are, in a privacy-preserving way. It is used by some of the world’s largest platforms—for example, to protect young people from harmful content and to meet their legal obligations under the Online Safety Act.
As part of our inquiry into the digital centre of government we did hear from Yoti, but, given the Government’s enactments on digital ID, we thought it would be interesting to ask Emily to take us through the technology underlying their offering and some of the opportunities and challenges in their technology journey. Emily, over to you.
Emily Hyett: Good morning, Chair, and members. I am Emily Hyett, group product manager at Yoti, as Chi said. I am just going to explain a little about Yoti and who we are and what we do.
Yoti is a UK-headquartered tech company founded back in 2014 and is recognised as one of the UK’s fastest-growing tech firms in the UK. We have over 400 employees and to date we have had over £220 million of investment. Our mission is to build the world’s most trusted identity platform, helping people to prove who they are and how old they are both online and in person, all while protecting privacy and inclusion.
We provide a number of different products across our identity platform. We have a reusable digital ID wallet, known as the Yoti app; we have one-off identity checks; we have 12 different methods of age assurance and verifiable credentials so that someone can prove they are a volunteer or a member of staff; and verified video calls to confirm that participants are real and not a bot, for example.
With rising fraud and misinformation, safe and private identity and age verification are critical. Traditional methods are fragmented, paper-based and often exclusionary. The Yoti digital ID wallet provides a trusted privacy-preserving alternative. It is free for everyone, voluntary and is used by over 20 million people, of whom over 7 million are in the UK. Set-up takes a couple of minutes. You can add a selfie and secure PIN, and then prove your age or identity using either a physical ID document or age estimation to be able to check your age. Each person holds their own private key on their device so only they can access their data and that ensures full control of their personal information.
Yoti was the first of 43 different organisations to be accredited under the UK trust framework, the DIATF, and that is now part of the statutory ecosystem that is embedded in the Data (Use and Access) Act.
The sector performs over 2 billion verification checks annually—for example, right to work, right to rent and DBS checks—and employs over 11,000 people across the UK. The trust framework underpins national priorities, such as fraud reduction, digital inclusion and interoperability. For example, Yoti is already interoperable with the Lloyds Bank Smart ID, Post Office EasyID and the Luciditi wallet, and that supports a more unified UK digital ID ecosystem.
Our platform benefits citizens, businesses and Governments by enabling trusted user-controlled identity, and that enhances safety, convenience and inclusion.
People can use Yoti to be able to prove they are a staff member or to confirm employment or their right to rent or right to work; they can verify video call participants, and they can also prove their age for online, retail, gambling, entertainment services and, soon, alcohol.
Yoti has completed over 9 million age checks through partnerships with our retailers, entertainment providers and social media organisations, helping them to comply with the Online Safety Act, age appropriate design code and Digital Services Act. Our facial age estimation AI performs over 1 million checks daily for our global partners, and it enables people without more traditional or physical ID documents to be able to prove their age without sharing personal information. The images are deleted immediately, and accuracy for teenagers is about a year or less. Independent tests also confirm that there is fairness across age, gender and ethnicity.
Our strategy combines technical innovation with ethical governance. So, as a certified B Corp, Yoti is independently audited for social and environmental standards. Our guardian council, which is made up of human rights and privacy experts, also holds us accountable for ethical practice.
We design for data minimisation, so we share only what is strictly necessary. For example, if someone is trying to prove that they are over 18, we just send a “Yes, this person is over 18.” We do not share their date of birth or any private information about that person.
But our journey hasn’t always been straightforward. We faced several policy reversals and market uncertainties. Back in 2018, reversal of part 3 of the Digital Economy Act disrupted age verification momentum; in 2023, the NAO tracking on digital ID spending reduced visibility of Government investment from the sector; in 2024, the reversal on allowing private sector IDs for public sector use cases—for example, Companies House or DVLA—increased fragmentation, while HMRC permitted only Apple and Google to store national insurance numbers on their wallets rather than any of the UK trust framework certified organisations; and in 2025 public concern about compulsory ID, costs and surveillance risk and inclusion continued to affect confidence and investment in our sector. Our industry remains really eager to collaborate with Government, but we seek clarity on commitment given some of the recent mixed signals.
Despite these headwinds, the UK trust framework provides a really strong foundation for secure, interoperable and ethical identity services. We also engage with other trust frameworks internationally—we are working closely with Canada—and we encourage the UK to build mutual recognition with other G20 economies, including Australia, Singapore and the EU.
To unlock the full potential of digital identity and age assurance, the UK needs policy stability, public understanding and cross-sector collaboration. We recommend clearly explaining the UK trust framework and that it aligns with the Data (Use and Access) Act; recognising the DIATF UK trust framework; accredited private sector IDs as trusted partners for both Government and private sector use cases, enabling and giving the public and citizens the choice over what ID and what digital wallet they use; supporting inclusion initiatives so that people without ID documents or devices, or who are less digitally literate, can participate; building public trust through transparency and restoring National Audit Office oversight of digital identity spending, while ensuring fair competition through the CMA; and promoting regulatory clarity and international recognition of the UK trust framework to foster innovation and investment, while also protecting privacy.
Yoti and our 43 fellow accredited providers stand ready to help Government deliver secure privacy-preserving digital identity and age assurance systems built on ethics, inclusion and choice. We are also offering 30‑minute briefings of MPs in person or online remotely, all recorded, on the UK trust framework and its potential for public benefit. Thank you, Chair.
Chair: Thank you very much, Emily Hyett. It is really good to hear from a British technology company working in this area, and it is great to hear about your products as well as the technology and governance that surround them. I know that the Committee shares your belief in the importance of public confidence and trust to make digital ID work. Thank you very much for being this week’s innovator.