Speeches by Jones.

“The mistake we made is that it was announced and then there was a period of silence. We should not have left the period of silence. I think it was a reflection of a number of things. There was a major Government reshuffle and we announced it just a week before the party conference season. There are various reasons, but…”

“I think that is right. If our Government or any future Government want to change that position, they ought to come back to Parliament to get approval, quite frankly, because it is an important thing for the public. It is also our responsibility, as we launch the consultation and talk to people around the country, to ex…”

“The consultation will ask questions on that, and I am also looking forward to working with Parliament on the legislation. My sense at this stage is that I do not particularly want to present a Bill to Parliament that tries to envisage all possible functions in the future and pre-legislate for them. I am interested in t…”

“Yes.”

“As in which functions are coming on to the app?”

“I do, in so far as, in the course of the Parliament, all that we are trying to do is get the consultation and legislation in place to enable us to build the digital ID system and integrate it into the app, allowing for a digital verification of right to work checks—that is it for this Parliament. We will do those thing…”

“The only thing that is changing is the digital bit. At the moment, the legal burden is on the employer, when they welcome you to your new job, to check that you have the right to work, and you can use documents to do that. The thing that will change is not that framework; the only thing that will change is that the che…”

“The initial costs, yes, because at the moment we are just spending money on staff support, producing and running the consultation, drafting the legislation and bringing the Bill to the House. We will have to come back to Parliament with legislation in order to get spending authority at the point at which we start build…”

“I declare my interest, yes.”

“I think there are lots of services that we could make much easier and integrate more in the app, such as the DVLA, tax or getting your MOT information and paperwork presented to you in one place when it is due, as well as your driving licence or paying money to HMRC—or even getting some back, if you are lucky. There ar…”

“Quite frankly, it is mad that you currently have companies verifying the identity of people but, if they think there are problems, they do not currently share that information with us because we do not have anywhere to put it. That is slightly barmy. My hope is that we will build a system where, whether you are verifyi…”

“The £1.8 billion was an Office for Budget Responsibility assessment at the last Budget. I am not clear how it came to that view. We challenged the OBR on that, but it is independent and was able to do that for itself. We are consulting in the coming months, so we do not yet know precisely what we want to build and in w…”

“There is a wider benefit as well. We know that fraud more generally is a huge issue and a huge strain on our police service. I am sure we have all had constituents who have lost money fraudulently online in some way, and they get pointed to Action Fraud, where it just gets reported as a statistic. The police do not oft…”

“I think Parliament would have to legislate for the public to have that. My hope, though, from a user experience, is that if you are logging into the gov.uk app with your digital ID in a number of years’ time, and some of these services are coming into the app, you will, in practice, just use one thing to get into the s…”

“Sure, but there has always been freedom for citizens to decide whether they wish to do it or not, as opposed to us saying, “This is what you must do.””

“One Login is doing extremely well. It is owned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, but many services across Government have started to use the One Login system. HMRC has started to be involved as well, which will be important for people trying to access basic tax information. As I said at the star…”

“I think it is just because historically we have never had a mandatory Government-issued identity in this country in the way that some other European countries may do. We have had the freedom to have a passport if we wish to have one or not, or a driving licence if we have qualified or not.”

“Digital identity, as I say, will not be a login. It will be a legal identity in its own right. I see no reason in the long term why, through the app, you cannot have just one place where your information is, whether you choose to have access to certain services or not and whether you therefore wish to use that legal id…”

“We are working across Whitehall already on a range of issues, yes.”

“The benefit of consultation is that we can take those views on. Of course a passport does last for 10 years, so it is only once every 10 years that would need to be done.”