HUMAN rights organisations and civil liberties groups urged Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer today to refrain from enforcing a mandatory digital ID. 

The government is understood to be looking into digital ID as a way to target unauthorised migration.

But Big Brother Watch’s interim director Rebecca Vincent was among those warning that a digital ID could be “uniquely harmful to privacy, equality and civil liberties,” in a letter to Sir Keir.

“Mandatory digital ID is highly unlikely to achieve the government’s objective of tackling unauthorised immigration,” the letter reads.

“The proposed schemes fundamentally misunderstand the ‘pull factors‘ that drive migration to the UK and would do very little to tackle criminal people-smuggling gangs or employers and landlords who operate ‘off the books’

“Instead, it would push unauthorised migrants further into the shadows, into more precarious work and unsafe housing.”

The leaders of Article 19, Connected by Data, Liberty, Open Rights Group, The Runnymede Trust, and Unlock Democracy, also signed the statement.

They warned the scheme “would require the population to surrender vast amounts of personal data to be amassed into population-wide databases which could be amalgamated, searched and analysed to monitor, track and profile individuals.

“A database which joins up all of our government-held records and logs our interactions with the state would be a treasure trove for hackers and malign actors, leaving us vulnerable to catastrophic data security breaches,” the letter reads.

A report by the Financial Times published last week suggested that an announcement on digital ID could be made as early as the Labour Party conference this month, citing two people briefed on the matter. 

In a recent YouGov poll commissioned by Big Brother Watch, nearly two in three (63 per cent) respondents said that they did not trust the government to keep their digital ID data safe.

Cyberattacks and the erosion of privacy were cited as the most prevalent concerns among the 2,153 people surveyed.

More than 100,000 have signed a petition by the organisation calling for plans for the ID to be scrapped. 

A government spokesperson said: "We are committed to using tech to make it easier for people to interact with the state, learning from other countries on how best to deliver this for citizens.

“We will look at any serious proposals that would help people access public services, including digital ID.”