Digital ID, a year on: our recommendations still hold
It’s been a turbulent twelve months for digital identity in the UK: a national digital identity scheme announced, debated, and then scrapped, all within the space of a year. But look past the headlines and the picture is far more stable than the noise suggests. Progress has continued regardless: secondary legislation now allows digital proof of age for alcohol sales, and most recently the government has laid the draft Code of Practice for the Data (Use and Access) Act’s information gateway in Parliament, which will allow trusted digital verification service providers to check information held by public authorities.
The GOV.UK Wallet, One Login, and the Digital Verification Services trust framework are all still developing at pace, underpinning a private sector digital ID market already worth over £2 billion a year and set to keep growing. The real opportunity now is to build on those foundations with ambition.
That’s exactly the case techUK made in our October 2025 report on ‘Digital ID and the UK: Empowering Citizens, Enabling Growth’. A year on, its recommendations are as relevant now as the day we published them.
We called for:
- Lasting clarity and consistency on digital ID policy, including international alignment with schemes like the EU’s eIDAS.
- A roadmap for digital ID adoption across priority use cases, built jointly by government and industry, with a clear strategic direction, measurable targets and a formal review.
- Government to commence the information gateway powers in the Data (Use and Access) Act, so private sector providers can verify against trusted public data. With the draft Code of Practice now laid, the priority is to get it approved and the powers switched on.
- Genuine interoperability between government-issued credentials and private sector wallets from day one.
- A clear path to independent governance for the Digital Verification Services trust framework, reinforcing confidence in a fair and competitive market.
- A bold plan to build public confidence in digital ID.
All of these matter. But what is crucial now is the thread that ties them all together: a long-term strategy that gives government and industry a shared sense of direction for growing the market and driving adoption across every sector.
Get this right, and digital identity can become one of the quiet, powerful drivers of growth in the UK.
Read the full report, and see our recommendations at a glance on LinkedIn.