What does the pledge mean?

In September 2025 the government announced plans to introduce a new digital ID scheme.

In a statement detailing the proposals in Parliament the following month, science, innovation and technology secretary Liz Kendall said “our digital ID… will be mandatory for Right to Work checks by the end of the Parliament”.

‘Right to Work’ checks are checks that employers must carry out to ensure their staff are allowed to work in the UK, and aren’t disqualified from working due to their immigration status. These checks must take place before someone is employed.

British and Irish citizens can currently prove their right to work with their passports, birth or adoption certificates, or a certificate of naturalisation as a British citizen. Others can prove their right to work with immigration documents.

At the time the new digital ID scheme was announced, a government source confirmed to Full Fact that anyone wanting to work in the UK—including UK and non-UK citizens—would be required to have the new form of digital ID, which would be used by employers to check they have the right to work in the UK.

They also confirmed that people who were not working—for example, retirees—would not be required to have one.

The government said it wanted the scheme “in time” to make it “simpler to apply for services like driving licences, childcare and welfare” and streamline access to tax records, but confirmed to Full Fact that digital IDs would not be mandatory to access these services.

It said the digital ID would be held on people’s phones, and include their name, date of birth, information on their nationality or residency status, and a photo.

The standards, governance and oversight of digital ID services is already set out in law, and a pre-legislative pilot has been running since April 2021.

The deadline for this pledge is the end of the current parliament, which will run until, at the latest, July 2029.

What progress has been made?

In September 2025 the government said it would “listen to a range of views on how the service will be delivered” and that a public consultation would be launched “later this year”. In November it was reported that this consultation had been delayed until 2026.

In January 2026 the government said that although it still planned for digital ID to be mandatory for Right to Work checks from 2029, the digital ID scheme announced in September would no longer be the only form of ID that could be used for this.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that the change meant that other forms of digital ID, such as an ePassport (also known as a biometric passport), would be accepted for the checks, and that the government was still planning to consult on the proposals.

She told BBC Breakfast: “We are saying that you will need mandatory digital ID to be able to work in the UK. Now, the difference is whether that will have to be a one piece of ID—a digital ID card—or whether it can be an eVisa or an ePassport, and we’re pretty relaxed about what form that takes.”

Although the government has said it remains committed to compulsory digital Right to Work checks, it was clear in its initial proposals that the new form of digital ID announced in September would be mandatory for this purpose.

This is no longer the case, as the government has now announced that other forms of ID will also be accepted. As a result, we’re currently rating this pledge as “not kept”. We’ll re-assess this rating if the government announces further changes to the policy.