No to Digital IDs: Tom Gordon Slams Labour’s “Surveillance Project”
Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, has vowed to oppose Labour’s proposed UK-wide digital ID scheme, condemning it as a “dangerous attack on our civil liberties.”
His comments come after Labour leader Keir Starmer announced plans for a compulsory digital ID system, raising serious concerns about privacy, individual freedom, and the risk of government overreach.
Under the proposed scheme, individuals’ identities could be linked across a wide range of public and private services, including healthcare, tax records, benefits, and potentially even internet access. Civil liberties groups warn this could turn the UK into a “checkpoint society,” where everyday activities require constant identity verification.
Tom also questioned the government’s ability to safeguard such sensitive data, pointing to recent high-profile breaches, most notably the leak of personal information relating to Afghan military personnel, as evidence that the government cannot be trusted with mass data collection.
Commenting, Tom said:
Time and again Labour seems to think that ID cards, digital or otherwise, are a silver bullet to fix systemic problems. They’re not.
This is Blair’s failed project rebranded. It risks eroding civil liberties, would cost the public billions, and moves us in entirely the wrong direction. People want real solutions to the NHS crisis, the cost of living, and housing, not a mass surveillance infrastructure.
Liberal Democrats fought against ID cards the first time when I was just a kid, and now I’ll fight them myself. We cannot support a mandatory digital ID that forces people to hand over private data just to go about their daily lives. It’s un-British, unnecessary, and unacceptable.
