Biometrics Commissioner and Forensic Science Regulator

Debate between Kit Malthouse and Graham Stringer

Thursday 20th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kit Malthouse]

I will come on to that in a moment. I just want to address the question of a legal framework. There is already a comprehensive legal framework around the operation of this technology. As Members will know, it has been tested through the courts. The police have broad common-law powers around the detection and investigation of crimes, including the use of technology, but there are other bits of interlocking legislation that need to be borne in mind.

Obviously, there is PACE—the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010 and, indeed, data protection legislation, all of which gives a framework in which the police must operate. They are also subject to regulation through the Information Commissioner’s Office on the retention and use of data, and through a range of oversight bodies—happily, some external and some internal. As Members will know, a number of forces have, for example, ethics panels that are looking at the use of this technology. I will point Members who are interested to my appearance last week in front of the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee, which is looking at exactly this issue—the ethics and regulatory regime around the use of biometrics in particular.

We helped the police to appoint a chief scientific adviser, and forces have access to further support from their own ethics committees, as I said, as well as the Police Digital Service, the College of Policing and others. We have been working with the police to clarify the circumstances in which they can use live facial recognition and the categories of people they can look for, and I am told that the College of Policing will be publishing national guidance soon. That is a word that I have come to love in this job—“soon”, “soonest”, “shortly”.

It is of course an important part of our democratic process that people can raise and debate, including here in Parliament, legitimate concerns about police use of new technologies, and that legal challenges can be made in the courts, as has been referred to. Bridges v. South Wales police is an example.

I know that Members will recognise the importance of the police holding a bank of custody images for the potential identification of suspects and, often, witnesses. However, it is important that the public understand their rights in relation to the biometric data of all kinds that is held on them, and in particular their images. Last year, the National Police Chiefs’ Council established a new working group to develop further guidance on the retention of custody images. Through that group, the Home Office has worked with the police to issue new guidance stressing that people have the right to request deletion of their custody images. The police will communicate that guidance through various means to complement the existing information that is already available online and elsewhere. However, it remains the Government’s ambition to deliver an automatic deletion system for these images. We hope to do that during this Parliament, and I would be happy to supply the Science and Technology Committee with more details when I have them in due course.

[Graham Stringer]

I do not disagree with anything the Minister is saying, but would it not be easier if, when people are taken into the custody suite after an arrest and have their photograph taken, there were a simple sign next to the camera saying, “If you are found not guilty, or you are not guilty or the charge is not sustained, you have the right to have these images deleted”?

[Kit Malthouse]

I certainly think it would be a good idea to provide people with that information at as early an opportunity as we can. Whether they would read a notice on the wall at that moment of particular stress is something that I would have to think about, but it should be possible to provide them with that information as they exit the police station, having been released with no further action. That does not necessarily suppose that they are not going to be subject to further investigation at that point, but they can at least be informed of their right to request the deletion. Whether the police force complies will depend on other factors.

I told the Committee last June that we would make an announcement about further reforms to empower the police to use technologies while maintaining public trust. As I outlined earlier, we believe that a comprehensive legal framework and a range of regulatory and oversight bodies are in place, but we are always seeking improvements. We have already appointed one person to carry out the previously part-time roles of the Biometrics Commissioner and the Surveillance Camera Commissioner to reflect the increasing convergence of those technologies.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport consulted last year on further consolidating biometrics oversight arrangements, recognising that the current arrangements are complex and confusing for the police and public alike, and that they potentially inhibit confident adoption of new technologies. We have also consulted on a power to create a code of practice to set out the principles for police adoption of new technologies, such as biometrics, to ensure greater consistency while maintaining the flexibility to allow the law to keep up with rapidly developing technology. We will respond to that and to the DCMS consultation in the spring.

As I hope I have outlined, the Government recognise right hon. and hon. Members’ aspiration that this should be a critical stream of work for the Home Office, and for policing more generally. We also recognise that there is the possibility to undermine public trust in the use of technology if we do not get the framework of accountability, supervision and regulation correct. For these technologies to be successful, they need to be successful in court, which requires standardisation and quality. We recognise that there are capacity issues that need to be addressed, and we are working with partners to fill those gaps. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells will take comfort, for example, from the fact that the Forensic Capability Network, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the private sector are, as we speak, working together on a workforce strategy to plug exactly the capability and capacity holes that he identified.

Finally, as I said at the start of my remarks, we believe that the use of forensics, biometrics and technology together, as they converge, presents an enormous prospect for a great leap forwards in our collective safety in this country—not just in the prosecution of crime, but in its prevention. The critical thing to remember about fighting crime is that the greatest deterrent to any crime being committed is the perception by the person who would commit it of their likelihood of being caught. The better we get at catching those people and putting them behind bars, the less likely they are to offend.