Speeches by Jones.

“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…”

“No, we will provide a digital ID that will be free for people to have but only if they want to have it and use it. If they still want to use their physical passport and non-Government providers of ID verification, they are perfectly entitled to do so.”

“It is an interesting question. Digital ID is not just a login, as I say; it will be equivalent to a passport-level verification of your legal identity. At the moment, it does not exist, so we cannot put it in the list of things that will be available for the polling centre. Given the level of verification, however, it …”

“We will keep the NHS app separate from the gov.uk app, not just because it is already really quite well developed, especially after the covid pandemic, but also because it has a very clear and strong brand that people trust. People often think differently about their health data in comparison with their tax, passport o…”

“I suppose the only substantive policy clarification was on what it is that is being mandated and how digital ID will work. The consultation will ask questions about that, on the basis that we have talked about. The wider consultation will ask lots of obvious questions. If anything, it has probably just become longer th…”

“We have had a series of roundtables with different stakeholder groups. We have also been building the taskforce team that we host in the Cabinet Office. The stakeholders we have been talking to have been representatives of different views: people who are pro it and people who are currently against it; digital inclusion…”

“I am hoping that it will be next week. The actual day is moving around a little bit, but it should be next week.”