Evidence on Digital ID’s shared in parliamentary committee
Dr Ozge Ozduzen, Lecturer in Digital Media & Society at the School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, shared policy recommendations for establishing public trust around digital IDs.
In September 2025, the UK Government announced that a new digital ID scheme would be introduced by 2029. As part of these proposals, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee launched an inquiry to hear evidence on how the scheme may impact citizens.
Dr Ozduzen shared evidence with the committee, outlining the concerns held by members of the public and urging for greater public consultation and statutory tools to enhance privacy and trust.
This draws on her broader work focusing on community mistrust, protests, and public attitudes towards state and technology infrastructures, including research on collective identity and distrust amongst people protesting the introduction of digital IDs.
The research highlighted the concerns protesters had around “stealth” rollouts of universal biometric identity systems through incremental changes such as age verification, as well as the risk of digital exclusion for those unable or unwilling to engage with these tools.
Based on this, seven key policy recommendations have emerged, including formal public consultation mechanisms, opportunities for deliberative decision making, and new rules to prevent ‘function creep’ stopping the data held for digital identification being used in additional ways.
Read the evidence and its recommendations here.
