We have systems in place to counter illegal working. Why do we need the other id? We don’t. It’s a badly thought out rehash of what Blair was pushing in the naughties.

As someone who lives in a country where there is one unique ID number issued to every existing citizen, newborn and every residing citizen, I really do feel the UK needs another ID. There are many people without a British passport (elderly or immigrants), the National Insurance number is only for people aged over 16 and does not contain a photo (and immigrants have to apply for it), and a drivers license is… well, for those that have passed a driving test.

So, have a new unique ID number for every individual born or residing in the country ties each of these bits of data together or works in place of someone who is missing one or all of those. In my country, you can use it to identify yourself at a hospital, or for doing your taxes, opening a bank account - or to log into many services. You even used to have to tell your ID number to a retailer when buying a TV so they could check to see if you had a license (but fortunately the government killed the license fee and bundled it in with our standard income tax).

And I have seen people people say “but what if the police ask me to present my digital card and my phone battery is dead?”. Here most institutions who have permission to look you up can still find you by your name and date of birth - since your unique ID number starts with DDMMYYYY followed by a five-digit number and they just ask you to verbally confirm they got the correct ‘you’ from their system.

That said, I haven’t read through the UK’s proposed plans for the ID card and I know historically the suggestion has been a little too invasive when it comes to adding “biometrics” to the card. All it would need to be is a unique ID number that links together all your other data thats scattered around the place… but clearly most Brits are dead against that.

They are happy to give their personal data away to Facebook and have it stored on servers around the world at the whim of Mark Zuckerberg, but not trust their government enough to store the same info on home soil to make the country run more efficiently.