In essence the scheme will allow you to use your UK electronic identity, for example, if you needed to access an electronic government service in any other member state. So once you have a guaranteed identity to get into the UK Government Gateway you could use it to pay French property taxes or a Spanish speeding fine.

There are five projects in the next stage:

- Providing universal access to some British, Belgium, Austrian, Estonian, Catalan and Portuguese government portals.

- Safer access to chat services by kids and young people.

- Making it easier for students to study in other European countries.

- Electronic delivery of documents across borders.

- Dealing with changes of address for people moving to another country.

The other joy of the project of course is that it spreads the British government's world-beating ability to lose data across the continent. In fact the British government got in early - it lost a USB stick containing 12 million Government Gateway access codes back in 2008. The stick was found two weeks later in a Brewers Fayre pub carpark near Cannock, Staffordshire.