FOLLOWING on from a Parliamentary Petition which garnered nearly 3 million signatures, James McMurdock MP spoke out vigorously against the Government’s proposed imposition of Digital ID during a Westminster Hall debate.
Mr McMurdock argued that “Britain operates on a simple democratic logic: we are born free, and the state may intrude only where necessary, proportionate and agreed by the public. Digital ID risks inverting that principle.”
Plans to implement the scheme, which is proposed to cost £1.8bn over three years, and which has come under fire due to significant data security concerns, were originally denied by senior Government officials, immediately after the July 2024 election.
Mr McMurdock further argued that “For the taxpayer, the cost is not optional. If [The Government] go ahead with it, we are all paying for it whether we like it or not, and whether we use it or not,” calling the scheme a “white elephant.”
During the debate, Mr McMurdock highlighted that Digital ID implementation was not in Labour’s 2024 Manifesto. Combined with concerns over the volume of British people arrested for ‘speech crimes,’ the Government’s proposals to reduce trials by jury, and the cancellation of local government elections, Mr McMurdock has decried the Government’s behaviour as “authoritarian.”
“Even if one trusted today’s Government, and many do not,” Mr McMurdock stated, “no Government should ever have that level of centralised control over their citizens’ private lives.”
