LONDON (AP) — The British government has watered down plans for mandatory digital identification cards, a contentious idea it had touted as a way to help control immigration.
It’s the latest policy U-turn by Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s embattled center-left government, which is under fire from both opposition politicians and governing Labour Party lawmakers.
Officials confirmed Wednesday that it won’t be compulsory for citizens and residents to show a digital ID card in order to get a job, ditching a key plank of the policy announced in September.
“The digital ID could be one way you prove your eligibility to work,” Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the BBC, alongside other documents such as biometric passports.
The government said detailed plans for digital ID cards will be “set out following a full public consultation which will launch shortly.”
Starmer announced in September that “you will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”
He said the plan would help reduce unauthorized immigration by making it harder for people to work in the underground economy. He said it would also make it simpler for people to access health care, welfare, child care and other public services.
He faced an immediate backlash, with polls suggesting support for digital ID plummeted after Starmer backed the idea.
Britain has not had compulsory identity cards for ordinary citizens since shortly after World War II, and the idea has long been contentious. Civil rights campaigners argue it infringes personal liberty and puts people’s information at risk.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to introduce biometric ID cards two decades ago as a way of fighting terrorism and fraud, but the plan was abandoned after strong opposition from the public and Parliament.
After the latest policy shift, opposition Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said that “Labour’s only consistent policy is retreat.” Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Lisa Smart said Starmer’s office “must be bulk-ordering motion sickness tablets at this rate to cope with all their U-turns.”
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street in London, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaks to members of the media during a visit to a "family hub" at St. Mary's Church Hall in Goldington, Bedfordshire, north of London, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2026. (Henry Nicholls/Pool Photo via AP)
Six players in Georgia’s rugby team and one member of the support staff have been charged and sanctioned for what World Rugby described Friday as an “orchestrated scheme involving recreational drugs" and the swapping of drug-test samples.
In a case dating back to before the former Soviet republic's team played at the 2023 men's Rugby World Cup, World Rugby and the World Anti-Doping Agency described a scheme of “sample substitution" with players' urine. The investigation, termed Operation Obsidian, could yet spread to other sports.
“What has been happening in Georgian rugby is outrageous and will send shockwaves through Georgian sport and government, as well as the global game of rugby,” WADA President Witold Bańka said.
WADA alleged a manager at Georgia's national anti-doping agency was giving advance notice of drug tests to a member of the team's “entourage,” who then warned players and staff in a group chat. WADA added that members of the Georgian agency's staff falsified the dates samples were taken, used “false documentation” to justify not testing a player and didn't watch players as they provided urine samples.
WADA said it has now “lost confidence” in the Georgian agency's testing and has asked the country's government to intervene.
Neither WADA nor World Rugby immediately named any of the players, how they were sanctioned or specified which drugs were involved. DNA analysis was used to detect the switched samples.
World Rugby told The Associated Press it intends to release names and other information at a later date once any potential appeals are resolved.
Georgia will play in Pool B with South Africa, Italy and Romania at next year's Rugby World Cup.
WADA said it has already gathered samples of Georgian athletes from other sports from storage for testing, to see if any of those were substituted too.
“This is not the end of the story as further investigation is now going on deeper into Georgian sport,” Bańka said.
Swapping contaminated samples for clean urine has a long history across many sports and was at the heart of the Russian scheme which affected the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
WADA said its investigation into alleged misconduct in Georgia used tactics from an earlier case, Operation Arrow. In 2022 it led to an Olympic gold medal being stripped from weightlifter Nijat Rahimov of Kazakhstan, who was banned for eight years, after he was found to have switched urine samples four times in the run-up to the 2016 Games.
AP Sports Writer Steve Douglas contributed to this story
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Witold Banka speaks during a press briefing for the upcoming 2025 WADA World Conference on Doping in Sports, in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, file)
