Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
United Kingdom Privacy

New Digital ID Will Be Mandatory To Work in the UK (bbc.com) 80

Digital ID will be mandatory in order to work in the UK, as part of plans to tackle illegal migration. From a report: Sir Keir Starmer said the new digital ID scheme would make it tougher to work in the UK illegally and offer "countless benefits" to citizens. However, opposition parties argued the proposals would not stop people crossing the Channel in small boats.

The prime minister set out his plans in a broader speech to a gathering of world leaders, in which he said it had been "too easy" for people to work illegally in the UK because the centre-left had been "squeamish" about saying things that were "clearly true."

Addressing the Global Progressive Action Conference in London - attended by politicians including Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney - Sir Keir said it was time to "look ourselves in the mirror and recognise where we've allowed our parties to shy away from people's concerns."

"It is not compassionate left-wing politics to rely on labour that exploits foreign workers and undercuts fair wages," he said. "The simple fact is that every nation needs to have control over its borders. We do need to know who is in our country."

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

New Digital ID Will Be Mandatory To Work in the UK

Comments Filter:
  • Get your fake Digital ID here!
  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:08AM (#65684778)

    ...what happens when you don't control immigration...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bjoast ( 1310293 )
      Extrapolating from current trends, the Native European seems to be at risk of sharing the fate of the Native American.
      • by Sique ( 173459 )
        Extrapolating from current trends, in 40,000 I will be more than 38,000 years old.

        But to be more realistic: Extrapolating from current trends, the current world population will reach 10 billions by the end of the century and not increase anymore. Everything else is nonsense or propaganda spread by people trying to instill fear.

    • Most of them were literally living in the Stone Age. They weren't gonna control anything.
  • by pete6677 ( 681676 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:09AM (#65684784)

    Starmer has no interest in controlling actual illegal immigration (the "boat peoples"). He only wants to make the average brit more surveilled.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      All this will do is drive up 'under the table' employment and consequently reduce tax receipts, likely to be made up by higher taxes on people who work with the mandatory ID. Why do people insist on learning the same lessons over and over again?
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Targon ( 17348 )

        They don't learn. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and these people keep following the same path that Germany followed in the 1930s.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      Correct. Illegals will get an ID the same day they land on the beach. Starmer will use it to label 'illegals' as 'legals'.
      • Idiotic comment that relies on xenophobic made up nonsense. There's an actual reasonable argument why this proposal won't work: it doesn't stop people from being paid in Cash.
        • Even if cash is stopped, there are always cryptocurrencies. Basically company scrip in a shiny new package.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Fucks sake mate.

      Please don't make me defend Starmer because I don't like doing that.

      Turns out that controlling illegal immigration is really really hard. I'm sure he'd love to solve it but it's not easy especially in these Brexit times when we decided to be adversarial with our neighbours. And the thing is the Farage isn't against illegal immigration, he's against all immigration. See his recent threats to deport people with legal settled status.

      Now don't get me wrong, this is a stupid idea. It's playing in

    • Rubbish. He isn't that smart

  • Now we just need some mutations and we can live in the dystopia of Shadowrun.

  • by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:19AM (#65684806)

    This ranks right up there with the typical "think of the children" on the absurdity scale for rationale. Those who hire illegals are still going to hire illegals. They're already stepping around the law. All this is going to do is make law abiding citizens more vulnerable to digital identify theft, when the government inevitably either gets hacked, or flat out sells the data to some interested party who is even less secure than the government.

    Digital ID is not a panache just because it's digital. Official IDs already exist. If employers aren't asking for them, you're just adding a new wrinkle, a new hoop, for legal folks to jump through. It will have zero impact on the practices of those who hire illegals.

    • by pr0nbot ( 313417 )

      Thought experiment: in 100 years' time, do we think people will have plastic driver's licences and paper passports?

      I'm not convinced they will, barring something like the internet becoming unviable because of runaway cybercrime AIs or somesuch civilisational calamity.

      So at some point between now and then those things would go electronic, and I don't have any massive objection to things starting now rather than in a couple of decades' time.

      Other countries have done it (Estonia is the one that comes up time a

      • Thought experiment: in 100 years' time, do we think people will have plastic driver's licences and paper passports?

        I'm not convinced they will, barring something like the internet becoming unviable because of runaway cybercrime AIs or somesuch civilisational calamity.

        So at some point between now and then those things would go electronic, and I don't have any massive objection to things starting now rather than in a couple of decades' time.

        Other countries have done it (Estonia is the one that comes up time and again, and they did it before smartphones existed) and the sky's not fallen in, so I'm not overly worried.

        I would rather that type of thing wait until cybersecurity becomes something that registers as highly to the powers that be as cybersurveillance. They're so very eager to watch everything, but they give less than zero fucks if everything digital leaks like a baby not out of potty training.

      • We are assuming we have trustworthy cryptographic algorithms and the foundation where we can do with these exotic PKI structures is uncrackable. Quantum computing is getting there, and only a matter of time before it gets to a point where AES-256 becomes AES-128, AES-128 becomes DES, RSA and ECC algorithms become a joke, and anything based on those can be decrypted or signatures easily forged.

        For example, Bitcoin will collapse when its ECC signature algorithms are compromised due to enough qubits.

        I don't t

    • Official IDs already exist.

      People carrying ID cars in the UK is quite a recent change Driver licenses issued before 1998 did not have photos on them and were issued with validity until the holder reached 70 years old. These are still valid today as long as the holder has the same name and address.

      There are probably many people who still have such licenses.

      Furthermore, it's not required to carry your driver license with you in the UK, even while driving.

    • "panacea"? I'm a frequent victim of auto-correct. But only because I'm a terrible speaker.

      PS. My phone autocorrected "speller" to "speaker."

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      His language mirrors Nigel Farage and other populists. "Clearly true" when it clearly isn't to anyone with half a brain, but appeal to "common sense" anyway.

      If you are worried, there is a petition against it with a million signatures, but more importantly it's a large government IT project so quite likely to fail anyway. It will cost us billions no doubt, but that's the price of stupidity.

      • His language mirrors Nigel Farage and other populists. "Clearly true" when it clearly isn't to anyone with half a brain, but appeal to "common sense" anyway.

        He seems to be determined to hemorrhage voters to the left if it means losing 1 less vote to the right. Thing is if people want Farage, the real thing is all its hideous glory is right over there. They're not going to vote for a knock-off.

        but more importantly it's a large government IT project so quite likely to fail anyway. It will cost us billions no

  • by Quakeulf ( 2650167 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:20AM (#65684814)

    ...and only make it harder for those who are there legally.

  • Ausweis Bitte! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:22AM (#65684818) Journal
    If there is any country in the world who must fear the implications of mandatory ID papers, it should be the UK.
  • by gtall ( 79522 )

    el Bunko will soon come up with the Greatest ID Card in the History of Stupid Ideas, every American will need one to prove he/she/it is qualified to work under this new Fascist regime. It will have your face on the front and his on the back. Any effort to deface his face will be met with detention in his latest Gulag and possible deportation to the country of his choice.

    • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )
      Your technofeudal overlords would still be pushing for biometrics-backed digital ID even if Trump never existed, so that focus is pointless
    • What do you think Real-ID cards are?

      • by gtall ( 79522 )

        From wikipedia:

        "The Real ID Act of 2005 is a United States federal law that standardized requirements for driver's licenses and identification cards issued by U.S. states and territories in order to be accepted for accessing U.S. government facilities, nuclear power plants, and for boarding airline flights in the United States. "

        So it is not a national ID card.

        I forgot to mention in my original post is that el Bunko is in the business of funneling our SS data to Peter Thiel through his DOGE maggots.

        His "jus

    • by jmccue ( 834797 )
      We already have one, "Real ID". The only question is when will this ID will be used a "show me your papers" the US had fought against in the past.
    • by flippy ( 62353 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @10:10AM (#65684964) Homepage
      news flash: companies are already required in the US to verify identity and legal eligibility for work in the US when hiring. Have been for many years.
      • Yes, and unless you're working under the table you've shown proof of legal residency or citizenship.
      • by kackle ( 910159 )
        I don't know; out of curiosity I asked the HR manager about this once and she said they only checked driver's licenses (whatever that means). And in our state, anyone is allowed to get driver's license.
        • by flippy ( 62353 )
          Then your HR manager isn't following Federal law. See form I-9, which is supposed to be completed for any new hire. (https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/forms/i-9.pdf) On the form itself, it lists what documents are acceptable to verify identity and eligibility for work. A driver's license can establish identity but does not verify eligibility for work.
  • The point is ending online anonymity, and shutting you out of society for wrongthink such as: "why are we militarily supporting these illegal wars that create waves of refugees"?

  • This is what you voted for.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yup - this is what voting for leftists gets ya!

  • by Targon ( 17348 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:34AM (#65684860)

    When you look at history, there is a fundamental issue that if enough people support something, no law to outlaw it will work to stop it from happening. In the USA, we had the 18th amendment that outlawed alcohol, and it failed, increasing crime of different sorts across the board.

    The lesson that SHOULD have been learned from all of these failures is that if you KNOW something will happen anyway, it is far better to regulate it and bring it out into the open so any negatives can be addressed. That applies to smoking/eating pot based products, to the less harmful drugs, to prostitution. By making these things NOT be illegal, it will eliminate most of the illegal activities associated with it, but it also makes it easier to regulate by just having some paperwork and laws to protect people from abuses. Reporting CRIME would then increase if immigrants weren't afraid of being deported or abused due to fear of being deported.

    • Given the insanity of saying things like 'cash bail is racist' tells me that reporting the crime isn't the problem - the 'revolving door' justice system just shoves people out faster and faster. Why would you report a crime? It's not going to do a thing.
  • by HuskyDog ( 143220 ) on Friday September 26, 2025 @09:34AM (#65684862) Homepage

    I've been trying to read the news reports about this all day and I still can't figure out some basic facts.

    - I've got the message that you will need one in order to get a legitimate job (obviously not for one in the grey economy) but what about people like me who are retired? Will we be required to have one of these stupid digital IDs even if we have no intention of working?

    - What about unpaid voluntary work?

    - I don't have a smart phone but the news constantly refers to making sure that the system is available for those who are "Unable to use a smart phone". What about people who are able to but chose not to own one? Will people have to somehow demonstrate that they have a disability which presents them using a smart phone before they will be offered an alternative?

  • Unveiling the ID announcement, Starmer says "you will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID".

    "It's as simple as that." Really? Is it though? REALLY?

    I can think of some who won't check ID, won't ask questions, and will "encourage" people to keep their mouths shut.

    Let's be charitable and say reception is ... mixed

  • That's the dirty Little secret of illegal immigration employment if you just go after the business owners especially the larger ones then that's the end of that.

    Of course the dirtier little secret is that if you just stop doing nasty little bits of colonialism and fucking with the countries where the immigrants are coming from then the illegal immigrants stop coming because they're not fleeing the problems you caused in their countries.

    But that feels wrong. It feels like you're rewarding them for se
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It isn't going to get better for the foreseeable future, even if we stop buggering up the world immediately. There will probably be millions of Palestinians forced to migrate soon, and even if we stop helping, Trump probably won't.

      Then you have climate change. It's at the point where we don't just need to stop making it worse, we need to help the countries that are being really hammered by it so they don't all migrate away from the natural disasters.

      • by PPH ( 736903 )

        fucking with the countries where the immigrants are coming from

        By definition, that pretty much covers eveything. From climate change to the rest of the world turning a blind eye to Israel's theft of Palestinian land in contravention to the United Nations conditions put forth when it was recognized.

    • I hope you don't live in any place colonized Europeans. If so, you're a colonialist and should leave immediately.
  • Even if the UK law tightens rules or increases fines, it won't magically stop farmers, B&Bs or small hotels from hiring undocumented workers for cash. That economy already runs underground, and many of those employers know how to avoid detection. Enforcement is always the weak link: if there aren’t enough inspections, raids or follow-up, the law becomes symbolic.

    The only real change comes if the risk of getting caught and punished becomes greater than the benefit of cheap labour. That might scare

    • what about all the folks working "gig economy" jobs in big cities, like Uber eats? I looks to see if there are required checks for those, and I see there has been a recent crackdown [www.gov.uk]. I wonder if digital IDs will make it harder for those businesses, and for folks in the cities to get their food deliveries? Or at least make them costlier?
    • Also fucking deliveroo.

      The workers there are exempt from minimum wage because they are not employees, and can share the job.

      Don't blame it on tiny B&Bs, IES the big multinational gig companies.

  • I was pretty sure they would keep to pretend it is to protect the children for a bit longer.

"I'm a mean green mother from outer space" -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors

Working...