The UK government will spend about £630,000 running a discussion panel on its digital identity card plans, which minister James Frith said will “consider different perspectives and debate trade-offs” alongside a formal consultation.
Frith has revealed further details of how the “People’s Panel for Digital ID,” announced as part of the consultation on the scheme on March 10, will work in response to a volley of Parliamentary written questions from Conservative MP Alex Burghart and independent MP James McMurdock.
Thousands of households will be invited to take part through what Frith calls “a random postcode lottery,” with between 100 and 120 people aged 18 or above selected to make up a “broadly representative sample” of the UK adult population. “No individual can buy their way in or simply turn up at the event,” he added.
Recruitment will be run by the Sortition Foundation, a UK-based social enterprise that promotes citizen assemblies, which appear to be the model for the panel. These are groups of people chosen through sortition, a process similar to jury selection but without compulsion, to debate an issue. The Sortition Foundation argues that they can “make trusted decisions that include minority voices while reflecting majority interests and advancing social justice”.
The panel’s meetings will be run by facilitators from pollster Ipsos, the primary supplier under a £4 million Government Communications Service contract awarded in 2024.
“The People’s Panel will debate how a digital ID can work for everyone. As part of this process, participants will engage with what a digital ID might look like to meet the guiding principles of trusted, useful and inclusive,” Frith said.
He added that participants will be paid “in line with industry standards” so that a wide range of people can attend, with payment based on the number of meetings attended.
Meetings will start in May and conclude by June 21, with the output “weighed alongside the broader consultation feedback to inform the design and delivery of the voluntary digital ID system.”
Meanwhile, former Labour minister Margaret Hodge, now in the House of Lords, has said that the scheme could allow museums to charge international visitors while continuing to let Brits in for free. “Should the recently announced introduction of ID cards achieve universal coverage, it would present a valuable opportunity to revisit the policy of free entry for international visitors to national museums and galleries,” Baroness Hodge of Barking wrote in a review of Arts Council England for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport published on March 26.
Unlike Hodge, ministers have been at pains to avoid using the phrase “ID cards” when discussing their digital ID plans. ®
