Starmer’s new digital ID playing cards will not reveal if you’re a person or lady

Keir Starmer‘s new digital ID card won’t reveal if you are a man or a woman after it was deemed ‘not necessary’.

Instead, it would use ‘biometric authentication’ instead of recording information about users’ sex or gender, but critics have said the revelation amounts to a ‘farce’.

Starmer’s digital ID was watered down after mass outcry against it being mandatory to work in the UK. Following a rebellion from his own Labour MPs in January, they will now be voluntary.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow equalities minister, said: ‘Having struggled for so long to define what a woman is, Labour have now decided it’s easier just to abolish the concept entirely.

‘For all the flaws in the government’s digital ID plans, there can be no excuse for failing to accurately record a person’s biological sex.’

An eight-week consultation has been launched by ministers on a proposal to create the new digital ID for government services, closing on May 5.

The consultation brief says that inclusion of sex and gender data ‘would not enhance checks that the digital ID belongs to the person presenting it.’

Digital ID has faced major opposition from the public and Labour MPs which forced Starmer to U-turn on his policy to make them mandatory for people to work in the UK

Starmer’s stance on what a woman is has morphed significantly in recent years. In 2021, he criticised then Labour MP Rosie Duffield for saying only women can have a cervix.

Two years later, he said ‘99.9 per cent’ of women ‘of course haven’t got a penis’. The same year, he described a woman as an ‘adult female’.

But then last year, Starmer said he no longer believed transgender women were women after the Supreme Court ruled a woman was defined by biological sex under equality law.

The digital ID cards could be used to prove the holder’s right to work in the UK, like a passport or an e-visa does currently. When first announced by Starmer, he said they would be used to crack down on migrants illegally working in the UK to curb small boat crossings which have been on the rise.

The digital ID is meant to make access to public services ‘quicker, easier and more secure’, though critics rebuke this idea, pointing to a major data leak in Estonia’s digital ID system in 2021 that exposed millions of people’s private data.

Ms Duffield now stands as an independent MP and said that not including people’s sex and gender on the digital ID ‘makes a farce of the whole idea’.

The consultation for digital ID will centre around ‘three core principles’ – to make sure the digital ID is ‘useful, inclusive (and) trusted’ and making digital ID ‘something people will want to get rather than something they must have.’

Pictured: Mock-ups of what ‘Brit Cards’ could look like 

It added that when users sign up, ‘Checks will be done programmatically and through biometric authentication, neither of which require specific sex or gender data.’

A Cabinet Office spokesman: ‘We want digital IDs to hold as little personal data as possible. But if people think additional data should be included, they are welcome to provide their views in the consultation.’