Police National Database: Facial Images

Lord Paddick Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right: it is a question of balance. It is a balance between enabling the police to do their job and to have a good database of criminals and those who have been convicted but also, as he says, if you are an innocent person, of not having your face on the database.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain why the police are apparently not going to identify and remove the photographs of innocent people that are currently on the database? If there is a name and a date of birth connected with each photograph, why cannot that be run against the police national computer? If the Government are saying that the police can develop a national identification database, why do they not say so? At least the Labour Party is being honest that that is what it wants. Why cannot the Government?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I am not sure I entirely get the tenor of the noble Lord’s question. If you are not convicted of an offence and your image is on the database you can request that it be—

[Lord Paddick]

From now on.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

From now on; the noble Lord is absolutely right. However, if your face is currently on the database, you can say, “It has been on there for 10 years and please will you remove it?”.