Officials told MPs this week that "more than 80 types of documents are earmarked for the government's digital wallet, including proof of benefits, driving test certificates, and Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) certificates."
GOV.UK One Login and the Gov Wallet remain active
Although ministers have formally abandoned the government's flagship national digital ID scheme, Whitehall officials told MPs that the technical pieces that would have supported it are still being built and expanded. DCMS figures said One Login already allows people to prove who they are online, and the Gov Wallet is being prepared to hold a wide range of credentials. Rod Latham, DCMS director for cybersecurity and digital identity, told the committee: "We already had One Login and the Gov Wallet," and said work on the digital identity trust framework was underway before the national scheme was announced.
What MPs asked at the Public Accounts Committee hearing
The revelations came during a Public Accounts Committee hearing, where MPs pressed officials for clarity on what had actually been cancelled. Sarah Green, Liberal Democrat MP for Chesham and Amersham, put the question bluntly: "But is it not the case, based on the answers you've given us this afternoon, that the infrastructure of digital ID in the public sector is still being pursued?" DCMS permanent secretary Susannah Storey sought to draw a distinction: One Login, she said, "is not the same as a national digital identity strategy."
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Protect the town officePrivate sector testing and a 2027 target for digital driving licences
Whitehall is already opening the tech to private businesses. Natalie Jones, the senior responsible owner for GOV.UK One Login, revealed the government had opened a testing environment for private sector providers to integrate with its digital wallet technology. Jones said that the integration would allow people to use digital driving licences to prove their age in pubs, collect parcels, or verify their identity online: "We've got a bit of a chicken and egg situation. A digital driving license is only useful if there are people ready and shops and businesses ready to receive it." She said further testing is planned for December, with a national rollout of digital driving licences targeted for 2027.
Consent, data sharing, and official caveats
Officials repeatedly returned to questions about privacy and whether citizens would have to consent before information moved between departments. Christine Bellamy, interim director general for digital products at the Government Digital Service, told MPs: "In the confines of digital ID used in digital services, then consent is the model." But the hearing underscored an operational tension: departments can already share data without asking permission, and officials struggled to explain how that existing capability sits alongside promises about consent. Bellamy conceded that "the strategy needs to be fully finished." Natalie Jones sought to reassure MPs on the technical design of One Login, saying it was "not a big data lake," that it stores identity information separately and "cannot see what users do inside government services." She added: "One Login does not issue a single identifier to people."
How private businesses, government departments, and citizens are likely to respond
- Private businesses and service providers: With a government testing environment open, shops, pubs and parcel services are being given an opportunity to trial digital driving licences for age checks and pickups; Jones framed this as dependency-driven — the credentials are only useful if businesses are ready to accept them.
- Government departments and system integrators: Departments already have mechanisms to share data without consent, a fact that complicates the stated consent model; officials warned the overall strategy is unfinished, indicating more internal coordination will be required.
- Citizens and privacy advocates: MPs and campaigners remain skeptical that abandoning the national scheme removes privacy risks, with concerns that digital identity capability could arrive "by the back door" as Rupert Lowe MP warned — through One Login, digital wallets, and dozens of planned credentials rather than a single national product.
Keir Starmer's national digital ID plan — once presented as a flagship policy aimed at cracking down on illegal working — was made voluntary and later scrapped when, the source says, Andy Burnham "decided to bin the whole thing." Yet the components that underpinned that plan have been repurposed and continue to grow. Officials insist the cancelled national product is different from the services they are still building, and that people will retain alternatives to digital identification. The committee hearing, the December interoperability tests, and the 2027 rollout target for digital driving licences will be the concrete milestones that show whether those assurances hold true — or whether, as some MPs warned, the country gets digital ID through incremental infrastructures rather than a single announced programme.
Source: The Register — Whitehall shuts the front door on digital ID but leaves the back open
