What I experienced last year was many digital verification steps that were all required: open a UK bank account, sign up for a UK phone number, secure a UK residential postal address, apply for UK right-to-rent codes, generate a UK national insurance number, file for UK healthcare registration, and more.

Each step had different digital workflows and UI/UX. To traverse all these steps took hundreds of hours and a couple months wall time.

Many steps had catch-22s. The UK bank account needed a UK phone number, while the UK phone company needed a UK bank account. The UK payroll company needed a permanent residence, while the UK landlord needed UK payroll stubs. None of the steps had a quick simple way to digitally verify my UK work visa.

IMHO federation could be a big help here, such as for government agencies and government-approved businesses doing opt-in data sharing and ideally via APIs. For example, imagine each step can share its relevant information with other steps. This could make things more efficient, more accurate, and ideally more secure.

What I have a problem with is just how fragmented and broken the UK immigration system is when you have the misfortune of coming into contact with it. It's (like many such large systems worldwide) a set of policies and rules that have accumulated over time into something that is pathologically poorly thought out. I'm going through the process of renewing my spouse's visa (I'm British), and it's fractally awful -- we've just had a snarky email from our landlord who is worried that the right-to-rent permission is expiring, but it's not possible to apply for a renewal for the visa prior to 28 days before expiry of her current visa. I meet all the criteria to sponsor my spouse for renewal, but the evidentiary burden is insane (I've collected 400+ pages of documents so far). Nobody wants this. It is very expensive and difficult (probably >£10k per person until permanent residency in fees, not including legal expenses) to be compliant even if you meet the criteria, which just leads people falling out of status (to borrow an American term). The government (of all stripes) tries to be "tough" but the only lever it knows how to pull is to make the rules stricter, not making them better enforced or align with some meaningful policy agenda.

This farcical situation extends into the UK's broken citizenship model where there are 6 different types of nationality, none of which give any rights you can't build through a hodgepodge of other different statuses. As far as I know the UK is the only country in the world that permits dual nationality with itself!

A government online account which can generate verifiable credentials would probably be helpful in a broad sense but it wouldn't cure bad policy which is rampant in the UK immigration sector. I'd much rather have some kind of digital ID that's clear and authoritative rather than just hoping that Experian has my details right with no recourse if they're wrong.

What they have done is drop the requirement for a single specific digital ID.

However they haven't dropped the requirement for a digital ID to work - you just have options between more than one digital ID.

For whatever reason, Tony Blair's think tank is obsessed with this idea[1]. As I understand he still has a lot of influence over British politics.

[1] https://institute.global/digital-id-what-is-it-and-how-it-wo...

> existing checks, using documents such as biometric passports, will move fully online by 2029.

Well I guess that's good at least. I imagine they'll just assign people "digital passports" at some point and you just pay to get a paper copy.

"... Labour MPs are growing increasingly frustrated with the government's U-turns.

Some had already been wary of defending controversial government policies to their constituents because they feared that the policy would inevitably be reversed."

which implies that the MPs are openly admitting that they don't state their personal opinions, merely parrot the party line, but are frustrated when they are required to abruptly change the things they claim to believe in.

What a farce. Members of parliament should have their OWN fucking views about things, and defend or debate those views on behalf of the people they represent.

A useless government is preferable to an even moderately competent tyrannical one.

So I'm not surprised to see this trashed.

I'm sure things have gotten better, but I'll never forget how backwards it all seemed coming from puny Belgium.

> Unlike in most countries, no official attempt has been made to codify ... thus it is known as an uncodified constitution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kin...