Speeches by Jones.

“It does not exist yet, so it does not belong anywhere. It is an idea at this stage as opposed to a thing. We will be consulting on some of the questions on security standards. I have asked the team to make sure it is at least equivalent to banking level security, with banking apps. Some of that is about device-level se…”

“Yes.”

“For this system.”

“There are two parts to the answer. One is: I do not think that we will end up saying that we want to build one massive central Government database with all the data in. This is in consultation, but I think that we will end up with a federated system where different types of data are still secure in different Department…”

“We have not made any early decisions yet. We have consulted across Government by saying to Departments, “What services would you like to be considered for coming on to the system?” We have already done some early integrations such as the veteran card being on your phone—driving licences will be coming shortly—but the p…”

“The commitment we have made is by 2029. If I can bring it forward, with the consent of Parliament, I would like to do that. I struggle to think that these things take as long as I am told they do, but I might be wrong. The long stop date, which was the Prime Minister’s commitment, was 2029.”

“In the spending review, the Government funded an increased level of investment into legacy IT transformation. There are too many legacy IT systems across Government. They will not all be transformed into modern systems by the end of this Parliament because it takes time to build the new ones while continuing to maintai…”

“The way I think about it—again, this will be in the consultation—is that you want the digital ID system to be a digital version of the passport system, as opposed to the e-visa system. The passport system has to reach a certain level of verification in order to give the level of confidence that it is legally proof of y…”

“An important part of that is that we are told that one of the pull factors for illegal working in the UK labour market is that at the moment it is quite easy to get around the system. This will not just be useful for employers, employees and the Home Office enforcement team; we hope it also says to people, “It’s actual…”

“The question or the answer?”

“We will consult on it, but I think the answer will inevitably be yes. The benefit, of course, of the digital system and especially our newer passports, which have a very high level of identity verification and security, is that they mean that the employer does not have to figure out whether a passport is valid. The sys…”

“Part of the consultation will look at what the audit function needs to look like to be effective. Employers have the legal burden to check, so they need to be able to prove their compliance with it too. My personal view is that you will have some audit function, but it will not say, “Darren Jones is working at this uni…”

“I am happy to. For people who are online, there will obviously be the online form; for those who are not, we will be making a consultation pack available to all Members of Parliament, should you wish to run something in your own constituency, which can formally report into the consultation. We will also be announcing f…”

“I can start, although it is more a Home Office issue. My understanding of how it will be helpful is that by digitalising the right to work checks, from an intelligence perspective, you then have more clarity about where you might need to go with enforcement officers. At the moment, if an employer does all of it with pa…”

“There are lots, actually. Britain is falling quite far behind lots of our competitors in delivering modern public services. Estonia is often the one that people talk about. It had very unique circumstances after the fall of Soviet Russia that explain why it built this technology; it is clearly different for us. If you …”

“I am sure that we will in some way. The Government Digital Service already has people building the One Login system technology. My hope is that we either already have, or will be able to recruit, some civil servants to come in and help us to build this. We should have external challenge on that process, because that wi…”

“My sense on the technological build—“How do you do this?”—is that these companies, as you say, have been doing it for 17 years because 17 years ago we had no idea how to do it. Now we know how to do it. We have been building a lot of the foundational technology in Government that we can build on. We can benefit from th…”

“Yes, and I went to a roundtable with them to talk about this when I was given responsibility for it. I was very clear to them at that stage—it was the first meeting we had—that I did not want to undermine their businesses and that I wanted to work in partnership with them.”

“First, it will not be £1.8 billion. It definitely will not be £1.8 billion to build the technology. You have the option of a private sector company having your login details to access your private information in public services. My sense is that the public would rather have a login to their public sector data without i…”

“At the moment, lots of companies use digital ID verification. Other providers exist, but if you are applying for a Barclays loan to get a new iPhone, you will get taken to prove your identity, often by scanning your passport and face, as part of a quick decision to get the loan agreement through for your handset. All t…”