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<\/p>\nBritain is not heading towards a “papers please” culture under the Government’s new digital ID scheme, Darren Jones has insisted. <\/p>\n
The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister said police would not be allowed to require people to produce their electronic IDs.<\/p>\n
Instead, he said the voluntary scheme could be used so people can prove their age in the pub or their identity at the polling station.<\/p>\n
It can even remind people which bins to put out when it is time for collections.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones insisted there would be a legal lock on making the scheme compulsory and police officers would be allowed to demand people produce their IDs as part of a “papers please” culture.<\/p>\n
Mr Jones told GB News’ Chopper’s Political Podcast: “We’re not going down that route. <\/p>\n
“And they will not be allowed to do that. <\/p>\n
“That will be on the front of the Bill in Parliament to make it clear that that will not be a legal obligation on anyone.”<\/p>\n
Darren Jones said the UK is not heading towards a ‘papers please’ culture <\/p>\n
| <\/p>\n
GB NEWS<\/p>\n
Asked if a future Government could make them compulsory, he added: “They’d have to come to Parliament and change the law if they want to do that.” <\/p>\n
Mr Jones said the new ID cards would be “the foundation of modern public services”.<\/p>\n
He said: “Most people know that for the majority of people, they’re happy to use their mobile phone.<\/p>\n
“You need an app and you need a login that can prove who you are… and then you’re off to the races.<\/p>\n
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Digital IDs can even remind people which bins to put out when it is time for collections<\/p>\n
| GETTY<\/p>\n
“And if you can make all of that quick, simple and easy for people, it’s also cheaper for the taxpayer. <\/p>\n
“That means they’ll either be more money available for frontline services like the NHS, or indeed giving money back to taxpayers in the long run.”<\/p>\n
Mr Jones also hit back against reports of opposition by the likes of Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. <\/p>\n
He said: “Bridget’s totally happy. <\/p>\n
“There’s no problems with us working with the Department for Education on these things. <\/p>\n
“She’s already talking to us about how we can make some of those processes easier for people. <\/p>\n
“And on the Department for Health, I was very clear from the start that the NHS app should be separate to the gov.uk app, primarily because we’ve already spent loads of money building it. <\/p>\n
“People have gotten used to using it after Covid. <\/p>\n
“It works really well… It’s probably the best app we have in government and people rightly want their health data held separately to their other data. <\/p>\n
“So I didn’t want to slow down the development of the NHS app by attaching it to a new project like this one. <\/p>\n
“And so I was very clear from the beginning, and Wes agrees with this that they should be very separate.”<\/p>\n
Listen or watch Chopper’s Political Podcast on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts every Friday at 6am<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain is not heading towards a “papers please” culture under the Government’s new digital ID scheme, Darren Jones…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":822515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,285,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-822514","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-scotland","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116220687126673641","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/822515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}