The Prime Minister gave a speech on 22 March 2010 on Building Britain's Digital Future, in which he outlined the need to make it easy and convenient for the citizen to prove identity when using online services. The Digital Delivery Programme is working with others across Government, including the National Identity Service, on how this can be achieved.
The purpose of the National Identity Service is to ensure that citizens can prove their identity in a secure and convenient way when they need to in a range of different situations. It can play an important part in achieving better access to services online. However, no final decisions on how a unique citizen identifier might be reflected on the National Identity Register have yet been taken.