Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
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Eurostar St Pancras: Border Control
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford Excerpts(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
As the noble Baroness will be aware, the European scheme requires people in advance to obtain these authorisations and to deposit the biometrics. It is not anticipated that this will cause delays at the border at St Pancras, as far as I am aware. As I say, for the reasons I gave to the noble Viscount, the anticipation is that increased digitisation will lead to faster use of e-gates.
Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford (Con)
My Lords, I was very interested in the Minister’s answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and the recent answer regarding digitisation at ports. Does the Home Office intend to update the biometrics strategy, which was last updated in 2018, given some of the challenges with future-proofing these technologies and keeping up to date with AI and other technologies?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I can confirm to my noble friend that the Home Office takes seriously its duties to review the ethics of the biometrics that are retained. That is definitely on our radar as we progress the future border improvement scheme and the increasing use of digitisation to accelerate the rate at which people pass through ports and airports.