Sept. 26 (UPI) — United Kingdom citizens and permanent residents will get digital ID cards that will make it easier to access health care, welfare, child care and other public services, the government said.

U.K Prime Minister Keir Starmer introduced the plan. But ID cards have been a contentious issue in the U.K. since the end of World War II. Civil rights campaigners argue it infringes personal liberty and puts people’s information at risk.

An online petition on the parliamentary website saying the government should not introduce digital ID cards has gained nearly 900,000 signatures, The Guardian reported. More than 600,000 of them have been added since Thursday.

Petitions with more than 100,000 names get a debate in parliament, but it almost never changes the government’s decisions.

The ID will make it easier to hire workers, according to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s Neil Carberry.

“We use digital ID every day, from paying on our phones to travel and event tickets,” The Guardian reported Carberry said in a statement. “There is no reason that the state should fall behind.

“By providing ID documents it already supplies digitally, the government can unlock faster job starts, and lower administration burdens in our labor market — as well as a faster, more accurate benefits system. This gives us a more fluent and dynamic job market — just what you need to achieve economic growth.”

One U.K. official said using the ID cards isn’t mandatory, but, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said, “It will be compulsory if you want to work in this country, so you’ll have to show that to be able to prove that you have the right to work.”

She said it will help prevent people from working illegally.

“The problem with national insurance numbers is that they’re not linked to anything else. So they’re not linked, for example, to photo ID, so you can’t verify that the person in front of you is actually the person whose national insurance number that you’re looking at, and we’ve seen a real rise in the amount of identity theft and people losing documents and then finding that their identity has been stolen,” Nandy said.

Tory leader Kemi Badenock said that the IDs announcement is a desperate gimmick that will do nothing to stop the [immigration] boats. There are arguments for and against digital ID, but mandating its use would be a very serious step that requires a proper national debate.”

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to create biometric ID cards, but strong opposition made him abandon the idea.