Hello and welcome to The Rundown, a podcast from Politics Home with me Alan Tolhurst.

This week, we're taking a look at one of the most complex and divisive issues in modern politics,

that of ID cards, an idea that is making a return under this government as a potential way

to improve public services, tackle illegal migration and modernise

the state, but one that remains intensely controversial due to significant concerns over privacy,

data security and equality. To discuss all those issues and more, I have with me Jake Richards,

Labour MP for Roder Valley, Kirsty Innes, Director of Technology at the Think Tank Labor

Together, Rebecca Vincent,

interim director at the campaign group, Big Brother Watch, and James Baker, campaigns manager at the

Open Rights Group. So Jake, I'm going to start with you. I think you're part of a kind of a new

working group of Labor MPs, mostly from the 2024 intake, that's looking to kind of

to push this government in the direction of putting a digital ID at the heart of the government's

agenda. Just talk us through why you think a digital ID is such a good idea. Well, firstly,

there isn't actually any working group. There's just a group of Labour MPs and people

that I've been speaking to since our election who feel that this is an agenda, you know, it's a

trite phrase, but that the time has come for government to sort of embrace this on a more

universal basis. And when we're discussing it, we feel there are a number of reasons why this is such an important agenda. One, because essentially this is sort of happening anyway. Government is increasingly using data and individuals' data in lots of innovative ways, but it's happening often in silos. So the Home Office is working on a program. D-SIT is working on a program.

We've got the Education Department now looking at ways in which we can identify children

earlier.

And we feel that that would be best served on a cross-departmental basis so that government

can really take the lead.

And then secondly, the big challenges that this government face around border control, public

...