Jonathan Bennett
New Prime Minister Andy Burnham has confirmed he is scrapping the government’s planned national digital ID scheme, redirecting the £1.8 billion earmarked for it towards cost of living measures instead. For a policy that dominated headlines for the best part of a year, it’s a striking reversal, and some are already reading it as the end of digital identity as a government priority.
Look past the headline though and the underlying digital identity infrastructure hasn’t moved.
What’s actually being scrapped
What Burnham has cancelled is the single national ID card or app, the flagship policy Keir Starmer first floated last year, softened from mandatory to voluntary after public pushback, and now abandoned entirely. That’s a real political U-turn.
Everything conveyancers actually rely on day to day survives it. GOV.UK One Login continues. Digital driving licences are still being rolled out. Mandatory Companies House identity verification stays in place. And the Information Gateway, the mechanism under Section 45 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 that lets certified Digital Verification Services request identity data directly from the Passport Office, DVLA and other public authorities, remains on track. The DVS Trust Framework comes into force on 1 September 2026, with the Gateway expected to go live once its Code of Practice clears Parliament later this year.
The scaffolding for digital identity verification in the UK hasn’t been touched. What’s gone is a single government app sitting at the centre of it.
Certified DVS becomes the default route
That distinction matters more than it first appears. A national ID app, had it gone ahead, would have given firms one obvious reference point for verifying a client’s identity. Without it, that role sits with Digital Verification Service providers certified against the UK DVS Trust Framework and listed on the government’s DVS register.
Jonathan Parish, Compliance Manager at Credas, sees this as a clarifying moment rather than a setback. “Firms have spent the past year wondering whether a national scheme might eventually simplify things for them. That option is off the table now, so the decision comes back to firms themselves: work with a provider that’s properly certified, or carry the risk of not doing so. The direction hasn’t changed, there’s just no longer a government alternative to wait for.”
Once the Information Gateway is live, a certified DVS will be able to confirm a client’s identity against the same authoritative records that underpin a passport or driving licence, without that client needing to photograph or upload either document.
What this means for your firm now
Nothing about MLR obligations has changed, and nothing about LSAG guidance on client identity checks has changed either. What has changed is that firms who were holding off on a decision, waiting to see whether a national scheme would eventually offer a simpler, centralised alternative, no longer have a reason to wait.
The practical question for firms now is whether the DVS provider they use, or are considering, is certified against the DVS Trust Framework, registered on the government’s DVS register, and ready for the Information Gateway when it activates. Firms that get ahead of this will be in a stronger position than those who treat Burnham’s announcement as a reason to stand still.
For more detail on what DVS certification means in practice and how to assess a provider, visit Credas.