LONDON – Britain’s next leader, Andy Burnham, will scrap government plans for a digital ID scheme when he takes office, signalling his intention to focus resources on kitchen table issues such as the cost of living, his allies said.
Dubbed the “King of the North” for his work as the mayor of Greater Manchester in northwestern England, Burnham will replace Keir Starmer as prime minister on Monday, when he says he will also unveil his cabinet team of top ministers.
Burnham’s office said one of his first moves would be to ditch a plan for all employees to hold a digital identity document, a scheme designed to tackle illegal migration but deemed a “fiasco” by a cross-party committee of lawmakers.
Starmer dropped the requirement for the ID to be mandatory in January after criticism.
“All the time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it’s most needed, such as helping with the cost of living,” Burnham’s spokesperson said in a statement.
Identity cards were abolished in the UK after World War Two, and Britons typically use documents such as passports and driving licences to prove their identity.
In November, Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility estimated the cost of the ID scheme at about £1.8 billion ($2.4 billion) between financial years 2026/27 and 2028/29.
“Labour have wasted millions of pounds on this project and now Andy Burnham is trying to pretend he’s riding to the rescue,” said Julia Lopez, a lawmaker from the opposition Conservative Party.
Lucy Powell, deputy leader of the Labour Party and a Burnham ally, said the savings from scrapping the scheme might not be large, but the move was “one small example of reprioritising.”
“This is an opportunity to reset, to refresh, to look at those things that are perhaps not just taking resource but are taking attention away from government priorities,” she told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
In interviews with both the BBC and Sky News, Powell would not be drawn on other policies or details of Burnham’s cabinet team, but she said he would stick to the previous government’s commitment on new oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
The Labour Party’s 2024 manifesto pledged to issue no new licences but to honour existing ones, such as the Rosebank and Jackdaw fields in Scotland, which regulators approved only for that to be overturned in 2025 after a legal challenge.
US President Donald Trump was quick to seize on a possible change, taking to his Truth Social platform to say “the people of Aberdeen, in Scotland, are dancing in the streets” because Burnham “has stated that he will be opening up, all the way, the invaluable North Sea Oil.”
In another area where Burnham could act, Powell also said the government has powers to put struggling water companies, such as Thames Water, into “special measures.”
“Let’s see if the government does so,” she told Sky News.
Source: Reuters
