Big Brother Watch response to digital ID statement by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister

Big Brother Watch Team / March 10, 2026

Big Brother Watch’s Senior Legal and Policy Officer Jasleen Chaggar said:

“A national digital ID is a multi-billion pound scheme that no-one voted for and that it’s quite possible no-one will use. The government could make accessing services easier without building an app that creates a comprehensive logbook of our lives “Almost 3 million people have already made it clear that they do not want a digital ID in one of the biggest petitions in British history and politicians across all parties opposed the mandatory scheme. A citizen’s assembly should not be used to manufacture legitimacy for the government’s highly unpopular preordained agenda. Even the Cabinet is split on digital ID, with ministers reportedly refusing to hand over our NHS records and our children’s education files for the digital ID scheme. What confidence can the public have to hand over their private information when the risks to their privacy and security are so high? “Given the public backlash, high costs, serious data risks and likelihood that this could become a mandatory scheme in practice, the government should drop this digital ID disaster altogether.”

ON FACIAL RECOGNITION:

Snuck into the consultation is an admission that the police would be allowed to repurpose our digital ID photos as mugshots to create a population-wide facial recognition database. 
“It is for precisely this reason that the public is rightly sceptical of a sprawling ID system that has been sold to us under various guises – whether to ‘stop the boats’ or improve public services – but which invariably hands more power and more of our personal information to the state, at our expense.”

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