The UK's Digital ID scheme never received much love - mired in controversy, the rollout was labelled a 'fiasco' by the cross-party Home Affairs Committee.

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So Andy Burnham's decision to pause is understandable, as long as he doesn’t close the door on the scheme for good.

With the Online Safety Act now in full force, and the under-16 social media ban progressing steadily, putting off a centralised identity system indefinitely spells a bigger headache for online access.

The verification industry is capable of keeping those services running, for now. Ofcom counted more than 69 million age checks across a sample of just 32 services from July to December last year, mostly carried out by private companies. But what we can’t build alone is a common standard.

Every organisation running face scans and document verification checks is doing it in a slightly different way, effectively building its own record of who you are, valid only within its own system.

Imagine that, instead of NHS numbers, every hospital, GP and pharmacy issued its own patient ID. You could........

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