As @vinay427 mentioned this is most digital now so you get a "share code" from the Home Office, which you provide to your prospective employer. In turn they go to the Home Office's website, input the code, and should get your picture, details, and entitlement to work.
That's on top of having a passport to go with it.
I changed job recently, and they just wanted a passport.
I think it is much, much, much more common to have dodgy employers/landlords who do not carry out the checks at all because they are fine exploiting illegal immigrants, and no type of ID card would solve that...
A lot of employers just want a photo/scan of a passport. I'm not saying making a whole fake passport is easy, it's obviously not - but modifying a picture of a passport is not exactly rocket science.
I.e. the employer did not properly and seriously carry out the checks as he didn't ask for the original, hence the heavy fine.
"The business did not see the original copy of the man’s passport, which its owner, Mark Sullivan, said was a “clerical error”" [1]
As I commented previously it is hard to counterfeit a modern British passport in a way that looks genuine and obviously any checks require sight of the original passport...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/22/surrey-chipp...
Then they will feign ignorance when fined 40k+.
E.g. if a firm is doing better than its peer group with less employees on the books, something is suspect.
is someone forging physical ID cards and also getting them real numbers somehow?
A relative had this problem when renting out a spare room. How was she supposed to verify the Colombian passport shown to her?