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Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

(www.reuters.com)
525 points alex77456 | 14 comments | 26 Sep 25 02:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.057s | source | bottom
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matt-p ◴[26 Sep 25 14:38 UTC] No.45387015[source]▶
So I currently have;

A National Insurance Card (needed to get a job), drivers license and passport, one of latter is also needed (in practice) to get a job.

Why would a brit card help us reduce the number of people working illegally?

The only notable 'employers' of illegal workers in the UK are American tech firms Uber and deliveroo (doordash) because they allow driver substitution without verifying that the substitute is legit. That should be made illegal and then fine them into the ground for anyone who slips through. Brit card doesn't help and is a distraction.

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1. astonex ◴[26 Sep 25 14:56 UTC] No.45387245[source]▶
A Brit can pass a RTW check without a drivers license or a passport - a paper birth certificate is also acceptable (and paper can be lost, damaged, forged), as neither a drivers license or a passport a mandatory. Getting those can be expensive for some people while this ID is free.

A NI number is not ID, it's a reporting number.

Lastly, a national ID is a tried and tested scheme in many, many countries and brings a lot of positives. The only "negatives" are slippery slope make-believe scenarios not based in reality.

https://www.gov.uk/prove-right-to-work

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2. matt-p ◴[26 Sep 25 15:00 UTC] No.45387312[source]▶
I appreciate that, I decided to exclude it for simplicity because obviously not everyone working here was born here :)

I don't really understand why I need a Fourth (or Fifth)! National ID?

I don't really get the point on reporting number, true, but it's also a UID linked to a passport or birth certificate.

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3. astonex ◴[26 Sep 25 15:04 UTC] No.45387347[source]▶
You don't currently have any National ID. You have forms of ID, which others might not have, but none are national mandatory ID that every citizen and resident has. As such many benefits in streamlining and simplifying processes cannot be achieved when everyone has a UID as such. Imagine making a system where you used various ID formats, and you couldn't guarantee anyone had one in particular, and some people had none.

Your NI card literally says it's not identification. A NI number is not linked to a passport as it's not mandatory to have a passport, so that would not work for many people. It is just a number used for tax accounting.

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4. noelwelsh ◴[26 Sep 25 15:09 UTC] No.45387396[source]▶
Now that ID is required for voting, it's reasonable that the government provides a form of ID, for free, to all citizens. Passports cost money and not everyone has one. Same for driving licenses. It should also streamline other government services.

I think it would be simpler to repeal the ID requirement for voting. I don't believe there is any evidence of widespread voting fraud, so it adds unnecessary cost. I certainly wouldn't try to sell the ID as preventing illegal work, which is obviously ludicrous.

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5. matt-p ◴[26 Sep 25 15:10 UTC] No.45387408{3}[source]▶
Ok then 'Government issued [photo] ID' so what if it's not a 'national ID'? They have all the data they need to tackle this. You can't get a NI number without proving who you are, if the government don't trust NI numbers (which they are minting?) then they could simply re-issue them? That would be far far easier than a new national ID.
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6. michaelt ◴[26 Sep 25 15:17 UTC] No.45387497[source]▶
> A Brit can pass a RTW check without a drivers license or a passport - paper birth certificate is also acceptable, as neither a drivers license or a passport a mandatory. Getting those can be expensive for some people while this ID is free.

This policy would absolutely sail through, with no controversy at all, if it had just been "free passports for all" reusing all the existing rules, existing IT and existing bureaucracy; and "Optional digital passport on your phone" for those who want that.

Why they're doing this in the most expensive, unpopular way possible - I have no idea.

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7. astonex ◴[26 Sep 25 15:19 UTC] No.45387514{4}[source]▶
>You can't get a NI number without proving who you are

That's not true either. You're sent your NI number just before 16 years old without providing anything.

Also, an NI number is just a number. There is no photo. How can you look at it and say it belongs to the person presenting it? And no you can't look up a passport or something in another system based on the NI number, because those other IDs aren't mandatory so the person might not have them.

The only way to really ID someone is to have mandatory photo ID, whether that be digital or not.

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8. anotherhue ◴[26 Sep 25 15:31 UTC] No.45387668[source]▶
How are the consulting companies supposed to make money with that kind of attitude?
9. matt-p ◴[26 Sep 25 15:45 UTC] No.45387812{5}[source]▶
How do you think HMRC know to send you a card? If they're giving them out like smarties to foreigners then they could simply... Not (a British person gets one as a function of having a birth certificate)
10. matt-p ◴[26 Sep 25 15:46 UTC] No.45387825{3}[source]▶
Passports cost money yes, but introducing a Brit card won't?
11. noodlesUK ◴[26 Sep 25 19:55 UTC] No.45390411[source]▶
A birth certificate is not proof of citizenship or legal presence in the UK for anyone born after 1983.

Anchoring proof of citizenship is going to become a very obnoxious problem going forward if there is not a population register or universal ID system introduced, as you'll have to go back however many generations it takes to reach birth before 1983.

I think the UK and Ireland are the only countries in the entire world that have non-birthright citizenship and no citizenship register, which is a less than ideal combination.

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12. bfg_9k ◴[27 Sep 25 07:20 UTC] No.45393793[source]▶
The vast majority of countries do not have birth right citizenship, and amongst those that to only about half have it as unrestricted.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

I don't exactly know what you mean by citizenship register but I can't imagine it's hard to workout who is a citizen and who isn't.

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13. noodlesUK ◴[27 Sep 25 10:15 UTC] No.45394544{3}[source]▶
The UK has no notion of a person number or national ID number that is tied to citizenship. Therefore it is not possible to prove British citizenship except with a British Citizen passport, naturalisation certificate or pre-1983 birth certificate.

It’s therefore a lot harder to prove citizenship for an initial passport application in certain circumstances than you might expect. You need to prove that you have an unbroken link of people born in the UK to someone born before 1983, and as time goes on that will mean even more generations. Right now you typically need to provide your birth certificate, up to 2x parents birth certificate, and up to 4x grandparents birth certificates.

In many other countries the birth certificate will have the person numbers of the parents, which will mean there’s essentially guaranteed to be a record of the citizenship of the parents that the state can check. Alternatively there’s a national ID scheme that helps bootstrap this information early in life.

14. rglynn ◴[27 Sep 25 13:51 UTC] No.45395722[source]▶
> The only "negatives" are slippery slope make-believe scenarios not based in reality.

This is an exaggeration. There are countless examples of how this has played out in the past, a quick google search will yield many of them[1][2][3].

The point is that any kind of data collection by a government can and will (eventually) be misused and abused. The UK government is currently abusing its powers to access Facebook and Whatsapp private messaging to arrest regular people for words (i.e not CSAM)[4].

This particular national ID introduction has about as much to do with illegal workers as the Online Safety Act has to do with protecting children.

1. https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/rearvision/the-dark-s...

2. http://www.preventgenocide.org/edu/pastgenocides/rwanda/inda...

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1986/04/24/s...

4. https://freespeechunion.org/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for...