Lisa Nandy has confirmed that “all British adults” will have mandatory digital ID cards “by the end of Parliament”, ahead of Sir Keir Starmer’s announcement.

Speaking to GB News, the Culture Secretary assured that the identification is to “protect Britons” and their right to work by tackling “illegal workers”.

A Government spokesman has also confirmed that although there will be “no requirement” to carry Labour’s new digital ID, it “will be mandatory as a means of proving your Right to Work”.

The Prime Minister will outline the details of the scheme in a keynote speech today.

Discussing the plans on GB News, Ms Nandy confirmed: “Yes, all British adults will have a digital ID by the end of this Parliament, but it’s not like an ID card scheme where you would be required to carry that around and show it to access services.

“The only thing that we will require people to produce a digital ID for is to work in this country, which we think will have a significant impact in helping us alongside other measures to tackle illegal migration.”

Quizzed by host Anne Diamond on the move, she argued that it “doesn’t seem very British” to ask citizens to “prove they are legal” in order to “prevent illegal work”.

Ms Nandy responded: “I don’t think it does change the default in that it ensures that people who have the right to work can work, and it protects British people from being undercut by an illegal market in employment.

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“When you’ve got a million young people who are not in education, employment or training, it is obviously having a significant impact on families up and down the country.”

Defending the plans further, Ms Nandy assured that Britons will “not need to continuously carry this card”, but will be a “postive element” to help remove illegal working.

She explained: “We’re not suggesting for a moment that people will have to continuously carry this card, this digital ID, that they’ll have to produce it to access all sorts of services. But at the moment we do have to produce ID for lots of things.

“If you have spot checks, for example, in workplaces or factories, you can be required to produce ID to prove that you can work.

“We’ve all got access now to things like the NHS app, which has been had significant benefits for a lot of UK citizens.”

Ms Nandy added: “So we think there is a really positive element of this to a lot of people across the United Kingdom, but it also will help us to deal with something that’s a significant concern to a lot of people, including many of your viewers, and that’s illegal migration.”

Claiming that it will make access to Government services “much easier and seamless”, the Culture Secretary concluded: “We’re not requiring people to use it for those purposes, but if they want to, and we suspect many people will, it will make their interface and interaction with the state much easier and much more seamless.

“We’ve been looking at the experience of other countries like Estonia, where they’ve been pioneers in digital ID and the measures that they’ve put in place to protect people’s data, including really robust encryption services, so that if you have a digital ID when you use it, only the parts that need to be shared will be shared.

“If we get this right and we’re determined to do so, having learnt from the experience of other countries who’ve done it before us, it should be more secure and help to keep people’s data more secure than the current system of having to carry around a lot of documents and constantly demonstrate that through different means.”