It's just the current "Blockchain" frenzy. It's now a bigger buzzword than Bitcoin and everyone wants to use it for everything despite not understanding the basic concepts.
Satoshi's paper never included the word.
Satoshi's paper never included the word.
I agree though that there is a lot of hype for "blockchain technology" and this seems like a weird use of it, since you already have a central third party that everyone has to trust.
They described the blockchain as an "ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work"
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introducing-govuk...
That aside, one of the identity partners is Verizon, which don't even do business in the UK. What's their incentive here? Why is giving my passport or driving license details to Verizon better than giving it to Government, a branch of which issued it in the first place? Frankly I think it's nuts and not a win for privacy.