Burnham Axes Starmer’s Digital ID Scheme to Fund Cheaper Bills
Downing Street confirmed that the £850m cost of scrapping VAT on household electricity from October will be met by cancelling Sir Keir Starmer’s flagship digital ID programme. It is the first concrete casualty of Mr Burnham’s cost-of-living reprioritisation, killing off one of his predecessor’s signature reforms to bankroll a tax cut worth about £45 per household.
The government insists the electricity measure is “fully funded” for this financial year through the cancellation of the scheme, which had been championed under Sir Keir as a route to controlling illegal working. It is a separate pot from the £2 bus-fare cap, which draws on a £454m reallocation from the energy department’s international climate-finance budget. Redirecting money earmarked for one reform to fund another underlines how tightly Mr Burnham is squeezing existing envelopes rather than finding fresh cash — a tactic economists warn cannot be repeated indefinitely. Watch for a backlash from immigration hawks who saw digital ID as a border-control tool.