The government has confirmed it will press on with sometimes controversial legislation to introduce create a new voluntary national digital identity scheme.
The Digital Access to Services Bill was announced in today's King's Speech as part of a programme of 37 bills for the new parliamentary session. The measure was described as intended to "modernise how citizens interact with public services" and follows a public consultation that closed just days ago.
The scheme would give eligible British and Irish citizens, and foreign nationals resident in the UK, access to a free digital ID via the GOV.UK app on their smartphone. The app already provides access to a range of government services and is being developed to include payments functionality.
The consultation document published in March, entitled Making public services work for you with your digital identity, set out the government's ambition for the ID to be "useful, inclusive and trusted." It proposed that citizens could use it to prove who they are - and relevant attributes such as their age or address - across both the public and private sectors, replacing the current patchwork of passports, driving licences and paper documents.
The government has set a target of making digital IDs available to those who want them by 2029. The scheme will remain voluntary for general public service access, but digital ID is expected to become mandatory for right-to-work checks by the end of this Parliament.
The consultation acknowledged that digital ID could also serve as an authoritative proof of address, potentially replacing the current reliance on council tax bills and bank statements.
The proposal builds on existing infrastructure, including GOV.UK One Login and the GOV.UK Wallet, which are already enabling single sign-on access to central government services, although local authorities have so far sat largely outside this ecosystem and it remains unclear to what extent the new legislation will extend to council digital services or require local bodies to accept and process digital credentials.
Digital verification service (DVS) providers operating under the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 are already active in regulated sectors such as right to work, right to rent and DBS check. The government has indicated that any national digital ID should play a "complementary role" within this broader ecosystem rather than displacing private sector providers.
Tech industry body techUK welcomed the Bill's inclusion in the King's Speech but urged detailed engagement with industry as the legislation takes shape. Questions remain, it said, about whether citizens will be able to store government-backed credentials within certified private-sector wallets or only within the government's own app.
Civil liberties concerns have also been raised. Compulsory ID has historically been politically contentious in the UK, and critics have questioned whether a dedicated government identity system is necessary given that most citizens already hold passports or digital driving licences. The scheme's voluntary nature is intended to address those concerns, but opposition is likely to surface during parliamentary scrutiny.
The Bill has no fixed publication date, but the government will need to move quickly if it is to meet the 2029 target for availability. Further detail on the Bill's scope is expected in the coming weeks when the government responds to the recent consultation.
