What could the UK government’s “BritCard” mean for identity verification on social media?

A centrepiece of Keir Starmer’s speech to the annual Labour Party conference this year was the announcement of “BritCard”, a digital identity scheme. As you’d expect from a party conference, the announcement was light on detail, but information included in the accompanying government press release stated:

• The scheme will be “free”, and “available to all UK citizens and legal residents”

• It is intended to act as the “authoritative proof of who someone is and their residency status in this country” and therefore will include “name, date of birth, information on nationality or residency status, and a photo”

• The ID will be “held on people’s phones”, on a “GOV.UK digital wallet”, which will also hold “the digital driving licence which the government has already announced plans to introduce”

• The only mandatory use case of the ID will be “as a means of proving your Right to Work”, with “no requirement for individuals to carry their ID or be asked to produce it”

• Other non-mandatory uses are envisaged “in time”, such as making it “simpler to apply for services like driving licences, childcare and welfare” and “streamlining access to tax records”

• The government will hold a public consultation on the details of the scheme “to be launched later this year”.

• The scheme is intended to be “mandatory for Right to Work checks”, and presumably therefore operational at scale, “by the end of the Parliament” i.e. by 2029.

The government release recognised, and attempted to address, critical concerns which such a scheme will raise such as around accessibility, privacy and security. It claims it will put “inclusion at the heart of its design”, and will consider the needs of “those who aren’t able to use a smartphone” and “groups who aren’t as experienced with the digital world, like the homeless and older people”. It talks up its use of “best-in-class security”, with “state-of-the-art encryption and authentication technology”. It suggests it will be good for privacy by minimising the need to share personal information beyond the “relevant information for the specific scenario in question”.

The announcement has already generated a significant amount of backlash and opposition. Many question how easy it will be to implement the lofty rhetoric about accessibility and security. Others highlight past challenges with government IT projects, or express scepticism that its purported benefits in terms of reducing illegal working will be worth the expense or risks to civil liberties. A petition opposing such a scheme has gathered over 2.5million signatures, and opinion polls suggest public appetite for such a scheme, previously strong, has recently waned.

Based on Clean Up The Internet’s past work looking at the public’s attitudes to ID verification in relation to social media, we aren’t surprised that the public wasn’t fully won over by the initial announcement. Our past research has found that the public do understand the potential of digital identity and digital verification services to improve trust and safety, and say they are willing to consider using them. However their appetite is conditional on getting the details right. Strong rhetoric on accessibility, or security, or privacy, will need to be matched by the reality of the systems which the government develops. Trust would need to be earned, firstly through providing a lot more detail to back up the rhetoric around accessibility, privacy, and security, and secondly - and most crucially - through actually delivering an accessible, privacy-respecting, secure, and genuinely easy-to-use and useful scheme.

A key distinction between the proposals which we’ve developed for how identity verification could be used to improve safety on Social Media, and the government’s proposals for BritCard, is that the government is proposing to make the BritCard mandatory. Whilst the civil liberties risks of a mandatory scheme are well rehearsed, another risk which we perceive of a mandatory scheme is that the government and regulators might perceive less need to encourage uptake by making the scheme genuinely useful. The long-term success, and popularity of BritCard and the gov.uk wallet will depend on the public seeing everyday benefits, for which there need to be everyday, non-mandatory use cases.

Social Media Identity verification should be an obvious, widespread, non-mandatory use case for the BritCard. BritCard should provide a vast number of UK users with a freely available digital identity product, which could make verification with a platform extremely straightforward. Assuming the government follows through on its talk of a credential-based system which minimises the need to share data other than the “relevant information for the specific scenario in question” it should address common concerns, also raised regarding Age Verification, around needing to share scans of entire personal documents with companies whose track record of respecting privacy is, to say the least, patchy.

This will require some joined-up thinking, however. Firstly the government will need to design BritCard, and the gov.uk wallet in which it sits, to be interoperable with other verification processes, services and products. Secondly, Ofcom will need to ensure that social media platforms accepts credentials attached to the BritCard for their identity and age verification processes, and indeed any other relevant credentials held in the gov.uk wallet such as those attached to the forthcoming digital driving license. This should be a no-brainer, but it would require Ofcom to be more specific than it chose to be in its previous guidance to platforms regarding Age Assurance. If Ofcom doesn’t give platforms clear enough guidance, there’s every risk of UK users encountering social media verification systems which don’t accept common forms of ID (e.g the Britcard), or require them to hand over excessive data, or process the data using a third party based overseas and with unclear GDPR compliance.

In conclusion, whilst Clean Up The Internet remains agnostic on the need for mandatory Government ID, there are clear potential synergies between the BritCard and social media identity verification. But for them to be realised the details need to be got right. The government has said we can expect a consultation on more detailed proposals for the Britcard towards the end of this year; Ofcom has suggested that it’s draft proposals for the user identity verification duty will be put out for consultation in early 2026. While Ofcom’s dilatory pace remains troubling in relation to an industry that moves so fast, these consultations should give us a much clearer sense of whether the requisite level of joined-up thinking is taking place, and we will be following both with great interest.