New Science Secretary Liz Kendall has this month hired the primary campaigner for a digital ID as her new special adviser in DSIT. Direction of travel…Kirsty Innes was Tech Policy Director at Labour Together and authored the infamous “BritCard” report, demanding a mandatory national digital identity scheme. The same idea the public rejected back in the Blair years as a privacy grab…Innes – who was previously at the Tony Blair Institute for four years – has long argued that digital IDs would “reduce exclusion” and provide the “foundations for a proper digital ecosystem”. She was also the author of a notorious June 2021 TBI report which pushed for the introduction of a vaccine passport…Meanwhile ministers have been carefully tip-toeing around questions on whether they’re about to foist Digital ID on the country – only that “details will be announced in due course”. They’re clearly not just thinking about it…