Yvette Cooper has dismissed reviving the idea of ID cards after Labour's Immigration Minister suggested they should "certainly be on the table".
The Shadow Home Secretary said "no" when asked whether it was something the party is now considering to help control migration.
Instead she said the party would have "stronger" employment enforcement alongside action to crackdown on criminal gangs operating in the Channel.
Her comments came after Stephen Kinnock, the Shadow Immigration Minister, said ID cards should be on the table and pointed to their use in EU countries.
The former Labour Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair passed an Identity Cards Act in 2006 but plans were dropped three years later to make them compulsory.
The legislation was repealed in 2010 by the then-Home Secretary Theresa May during the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government.
But asked on Times Radio whether ID cards could be part of the solution to prevent people crossing the Channel, Mr Kinnock said: "I think they should certainly be on the table, it needs to be properly reviewed and discussed.
"It was something that I think a previous Labour government got very close to introducing them and for various reasons it didn't come off."
He added: "I thought it was extraordinary in the wake of Brexit that everybody said, oh, there are 3 million EU citizens in the UK, it turned out there were 5 million.
"It is just simply extraordinary that we had 2 million more people in our country that we thought we did. That's just not sustainable.
"A registration process and system needs to be looked at very, very carefully indeed. And that is such certainly something that Labour is reviewing and will be looking at very carefully."
When tackled on concerns about infringements on civil liberties, Mr Kinnock said it is a "very valid concern".
He stressed any review and policy conversations over the introduction of ID cards would involve "close consultation with civil liberties groups" to ensure protections.
"And I think one of the reasons that this fell down under a previous Labour government was I think they ended up trying to put too much information into these ID cards.
"So perhaps, you know, rather than going for an all singing, all dancing, just something very simple and basic, as just a very basic form of ID because that then doesn't get you into areas of civil liberties as much.
The Labour MP John Spellar said: "Tony Blair was an outstanding Labour Prime Minister, but his obsession with ID cards for all was not one of his better ideas."
Posting on Twitter he said there were good reasons why the policy was never introduced and "we should bin this recycled plan" as soon as possible.
The Prime Minister's official spokesperson also insisted on Tuesday that there were "no plans for UK ID cards, not a national identity database".
No10 said Britain already widely used e-visas, which “act as digital evidence for someone’s immigration status” for employers, landlords and services.
