Written evidence submitted by Clifford D Hoy (HAR2295)

Dear Chair Dame Bradley and Members of the Home Affairs Select Committee,

Written Submission in Opposition

I write to express my strong opposition to the proposals under consideration regarding new forms of government-issued digital identification. While framed as measures to reduce crime, manage migration, and increase administrative efficiency, these initiatives carry grave risks to privacy, civil liberties, and democratic accountability. My responses to the specific questions are set out below.

1. Current Data Use and Sharing

The Home Office and its agencies already hold extensive powers of data collection and surveillance. Existing systems suffer from well-documented flaws, including inaccurate data, poor inter-departmental communication, and repeated breaches of information security. Extending these systems through digital identification will magnify existing failures rather than solve them, entrenching structural inefficiencies while further undermining public trust.

2. Claimed Benefits of Digital Identification

a. Applications

i. Crime Prevention and Investigation:
Fraud prevention does not require the creation of a universal, centralised identity system. Effective fraud reduction depends on targeted oversight, improved digital literacy, and stronger regulatory action on private sector data misuse. A single digital ID risks becoming a new avenue for identity theft on a massive scale.

ii. Border Entries and Exits:
Biometric passports and visas already provide mechanisms for managing border flows. Additional layers of digital ID will not materially enhance this, but will increase the likelihood of errors, false positives, and discriminatory profiling.

iii. Immigration Enforcement:
Digital ID risks turning everyday life—renting a flat, accessing healthcare, or taking a job—into a checkpoint. This collapses the distinction between civic participation and immigration control, fostering a hostile environment that disproportionately harms vulnerable communities.

iv. Labour Market Enforcement:
Existing employment checks already burden businesses and workers. A digital ID system would centralise errors, with the potential to wrongly exclude lawful workers from livelihoods, creating precarity rather than protection.

v. Asylum Administration:
Asylum applicants require humane, efficient processing—not digital identifiers that render them perpetually traceable. The proposal risks normalising surveillance rather than upholding rights under international law.

b. Mandatory Status

The very premise of effectiveness relies on compulsion: once “voluntary,” such schemes quickly become de facto mandatory for banking, housing, and employment. This erodes the principle of consent, coercing individuals into compliance with a surveillance infrastructure that extends far beyond crime prevention.

3. Categories of Information

Digital IDs inevitably invite scope creep: from name and age to biometrics, financial data, health records, and social behaviours. Each added category multiplies risks of misuse, discrimination, and breaches. For law enforcement, the temptation is clear: to merge all available data into a single profiling tool. For individuals, this is a dystopian collapse of informational boundaries that protect privacy, dignity, and autonomy.

4. Risks to Individuals

The risks are profound:

• Privacy Erosion: Centralised IDs dismantle anonymity in daily life.
• Data Security: Large government databases are prime targets for cyber-attacks, with inevitable breaches.
• Function Creep: IDs introduced for one purpose will be repurposed for surveillance and control.
• Exclusion: Technical errors and unequal access to digital infrastructure risk disenfranchising marginalised groups.
• Authoritarian Drift: The infrastructure of universal identification can be weaponised against dissenters and minorities, as international examples demonstrate.

5. Capabilities Required

The Home Office would require vast new technical, legal, and bureaucratic capabilities. This includes secure IT infrastructures, advanced cybersecurity defences, and ethical governance frameworks. The track record of major public sector IT projects in the UK suggests a high likelihood of failure, escalating costs, and systemic vulnerabilities.

6. Efficiency Claims

Efficiency arguments are illusory. Any initial gains are offset by the long-term costs of maintaining vast data infrastructures, responding to breaches, correcting errors, and litigating abuses. True efficiency lies in simplifying systems, not constructing additional layers of digital bureaucracy.

7. International Lessons

Experiences abroad are cautionary, not aspirational.

• In India, the Aadhaar system has led to widespread exclusion, fraud, and civil rights violations.
• In China, digital identity is entwined with social credit and pervasive surveillance.
• Even in Europe, where protections are stronger, public resistance reflects legitimate concerns about misuse.

These examples demonstrate that once built, such systems are nearly impossible to restrain, and their harms are borne most heavily by the most vulnerable.

Conclusion

The adoption of government-issued digital identification represents a disproportionate and dangerous response to challenges that can be addressed through existing, less invasive means. It risks creating an infrastructure of mass surveillance incompatible with a democratic society. The Home Office should focus instead on strengthening targeted enforcement, improving data governance within existing systems, and safeguarding individual rights.

I therefore urge the Committee to reject the introduction of new forms of digital identification.

Yours sincerely,
 

Aug 2025