The Labour government will announce measures to make the under-16s social media ban harsher after reports that children could get past face-checker systems and so on. Who could have predicted this?
Ministers are aware that children can use a VPN or in some cases draw beards on themselves for selfie-checker verification systems. They plan to force platforms to require driving licences or passports – so-called “hard checks” – to access their services. Making things more miserable for everyone…
Burnham’s government is now claiming that it will only ban those sites with ‘addictive’ features instead of a blanket approach, telling the Times: “This isn’t about banning social media platforms for young people outright, this is about banning sites that have addictive and damaging features. If they remove these features, the ban will be lifted.” Platforms and apps with ‘addictive features’ are also meant to turn them off for 16 and 17-year-olds as well as instituting a midnight-to-6 a.m. curfew. If you aren’t going to try to restrict or ban VPNs any measures will be able to be circumvented – and not even China has managed to stop people using VPNs…
Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary Cat Little has told staff this morning that the Digital ID policy isn’t totally dead after all. Instead, it lives on within DCMS. She even apologised for the confusion given the briefings to the opposite effect. Not to mention the fact that Burnham’s spokesman said over the weekend that the “time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it’s most needed, such as helping with the cost of living“. The cracks already appearing. Darren Jones is having a fantastic 24 hours post-sacking…
UPDATE: Guido hears Digital ID as a policy will die, but the infrastructure and teams around it are going to DCMS to close them down more gently. Instead of sacking them all straight away…
UPDATE II: No10 spokesman says at this afternoon’s Lobby briefing of political hacks, “Digital ID was not yet operational because the policy was in its consultation phase. It means the intention and effort can be used to tackling the abuses the of welfare and immigration systems…”
A flagship cost of living policy and the first to be announced by Burnham is falling apart less than two hours after it was announced. Start as you mean to go on?
At 6 a.m. No10 said:
“Government is tackling rising bills with a tax cut to remove VAT from domestic electricity bills from October 1 in time to impact the next Ofgem price cap. This immediate action applies and is funded for this financial year. The cost of this immediate action for this financial year – taken now, before the next price cap – is being funded from the cancellation of the (£1.8bn) Digital ID programme.”
Removal of the 5% VAT rate is set to cost £850 million and last for one year – Burnham’s government says longer term measures will be explored at the Budget. In a policy release No10 said it would be funded by scrapping Digital ID, a policy which the OBR said was still unfunded. No10 snuck in a line at the end of its release: “Savings were due to be identified from within existing budgets through reprioritisation, which will now be redirected towards this measure.” But one backbencher was not satisfied…
Darren Jones, who had responsibility for Digital ID until he was sacked yesterday, has tweeted this morning:
“Good news that VAT will be cut on electricity bills. It’s a simple way for families to save a few quid, and to mechanically help to keep inflation that little bit lower.
But the DigitalID program was unfunded.
The government will have to set out how it will pay for its new policies at the budget.”
That troublesome old PLP…
The Cabinet Office has spent £1.58 million of taxpayer cash advertising Labour’s Digital ID consultation.
Labour spent a total of £1,578,482 on paid advertising and promotional activity to promote its public consultation on Digital ID, according to documents uncovered by Guido’s FOI Unit. The main consultation is for over-18s despite Labour lowering the voting age to 16-year-olds…
Social media was the single biggest line of spending at £422,616, routed across Meta, Reddit and TikTok. Digital display advertising came second at £367,351 on Google, The Trade Desk and verification firm DoubleVerify…
Out of home posters cost £247,263 and radio advertising came to £245,309, spread across a wide roster of broadcasters including Bauer, GB News and Global Media Group.
The full breakdown by channel: Social £422,616, Digital Display £367,351, Out of Home £247,263, Radio £245,309, Digital Audio £167,360, Video £128,229, Search £354. All of the spending was routed through the Government Communication Service’s central campaigns budget. All for a hated policy – will Josh Simons push it through under Burnham?
A Tory MP asked the government why exactly Darren Jones went to Australia. He recorded a vanity vox pop with locals saying how great their Digital ID is…
A whole lot of guff came in return in a parliamentary answer:
“The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister visited Australia in April 2026 to build critical policy and security links with state and regional authorities in Australia.
This included defence visits for the AUKUS programme, and discussions with Ministers at both Federal and State level and with private sector stakeholders on support for British businesses, bolstering regional security and learnings about harnessing technology to modernise public services based on learnings from the Australian government their successes and challenges as pioneers in providing online government services.
State-level meetings included understanding the context for the roll out of the New South Wales state digital ID pilot and visiting South Australia to highlight the extent of UK-Australian cooperation, focusing particularly on secure growth, including opportunities presented by the AUKUS programme.”
Who wanted to send Darren 10,500 miles away this month?
The government is advertising its consultation on Digital ID on podcasts. A project led by Darren Jones, who wants ideas…
Jones said that government consultations were fake, unlike this one, which was launched on 10 March:
“This consultation is not a performative consultation. It’s a genuine one. That’s why we’re not just doing a kind of online consultation in the way that normal consultations might happen.”
Labour is blocking 16-year-olds from taking part in the consultation despite proposing to give them the vote. Previous ads for Labour’s Digital ID have not gone down so well. The government responded to a Parliamentary question today: “We have a duty to reach as broad a population as possible and have worked with media partners in order to ensure that the public are aware of the consultation and how to participate. For this campaign, we’ve worked with two podcast partners: Acast and Audioboom, with a combined spend of £62,817 for the duration of the 12 week consultation.“ Now The Rest is Politics listeners can take part in the people’s assembly they always wanted…
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”