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Britain to introduce compulsory digital ID for workers

(www.reuters.com)
525 points alex77456 | 3 comments | 26 Sep 25 02:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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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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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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1. 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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2. 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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3. noodlesUK ◴[27 Sep 25 10:15 UTC] No.45394544[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.