The Prime Minister has announced that the government will introduce digital ID cards which he claims will stop illegal working in the UK.
The government is saying the role out of digital ID cards will make it easier for people to use their services.
Starmer’s move has proven to be controversial and a petition has garnered more then 798,000 signatures of people opposing the government’s plan.
Starmer said, “Our immigration system does need to be fair if we want to maintain that binding contract that politics is built on, otherwise it undermines trust, undermines people’s faith that we’re on their side and their belief that the state can and will work for them.
And that is why today I am announcing this government will make a new, free of charge digital ID, mandatory for the right to work by the end of this Parliament.
“Let me spell it out. You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital I.D..
“It’s as simple as that because decent, pragmatic, fair minded people, they want us to tackle the issues that they see around them.”
He went on to say that the governments have been “squeamish” in talking about immigration.
Starmer said, “We’ve got to look ourselves in the mirror and recognise where we’ve allowed our parties to shy away from people’s concerns and let the politics of purity patronise people.
“Now, you will all have issues in your own countries, but in Britain it’s illegal migration, and I suspect that may be the same in a number of other countries.
For too many years, it’s been too easy for people to come here, slip into the shadow economy and remain here illegally because frankly, we’ve been squeamish about saying things that are clearly true.
He said that voters are “disappointed” over the lack of pace to stop the small boats crossing the English Channel.
Starmer said, “People are very disappointed with the pace of change in government. It’s so much slower than almost every other facet of their lives. So we do have to speed up delivery.”
The Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told BBC Breakfast, “It will be compulsory if you want to work in this country, so you’ll have to show that to be able to prove that you have the right to work.”
Nandy said that a national insurance number “won’t be sufficient” to demonstrate a person has the right to work.
She said, “The problem with national insurance numbers is that they’re not linked to anything else. So they’re not linked, for example, to photo ID, so you can’t verify that the person in front of you is actually the person whose national insurance number that you’re looking at, and we’ve seen a real rise in the amount of identity theft and people losing documents and then finding that their identity has been stolen.
