The announcement of compulsory digital identification for every adult in the UK marks a worrying new development in this government’s agenda. I want to be clear: I strongly oppose it.

Supporters of digital ID – both members of the public and politicians - often argue that it will bring efficiency. Passports, driving licences, national insurance numbers, NHS numbers, payroll details… the paperwork of modern life is undeniably heavy.

Digital ID claims to strip away some of that burden by replacing it with a single, streamlined profile. I will not pretend that this wouldn’t be convenient. But convenience is not the same as necessity - and it certainly doesn’t justify the risks.

Labour argue that compulsory digital ID is needed to prevent illegal working and to deter illegal migration. They even suggest it will stop the boats. But this is a flimsy foundation for such a heavy-handed policy. Migrant workers already require visas. Those working cash-in-hand already evade HMRC, immigration officers and enforcement agencies.

If these checks can be bypassed today, why would digital ID succeed where they have failed? The truth is clear: compulsory ID cards will not stop illegal working, and they will not stop the boats.

What they will do is hand more power to the state. A compulsory digital ID is not just unnecessary - it is invasive, enormously expensive, and deeply troubling for anyone who values freedom.

It places your personal data, your background, your life on a centralised database, ready to be accessed or misused. And once such a system exists, the temptation for government to expand its use will be irresistible. Today the justification is employment checks.

Tomorrow it could be welfare eligibility, access to healthcare, even control over what you say online. The infrastructure will already be there. That should send a shiver down the spine of anyone who believes in liberty.

We should also remember how we got here. The idea of national identity cards is not new. It has been floated and rejected for decades.

In the early 1990s, consultations recommended against making them compulsory. In 2006, Tony Blair’s Identity Cards Act created a voluntary scheme, but it was scrapped by the Coalition because of spiralling costs and the threat to privacy. Since then, the issue has been quiet - until now, when Keir Starmer has chosen to revive it. Not as a serious solution to illegal migration, but as a smokescreen for his Government’s scandals and failures.

Britain has never been a “papers please” country. Privacy and freedom are not inconveniences to be traded away for bureaucratic tidiness. They are the bedrock of a free society. That is why Labour’s plan is such a dangerous step in the wrong direction.

Digital ID is invasive. It is expensive. And it is wrong.